Tag Archives: Lucille Clifton

Mourning a Lost Uterus

By Robin Bates | Published: April 3, 2023

Anna Holmes recently wrote about sadness over losing her uterus. Lucille Clifton has poems she might find consoling.

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Lucille Clifton on Black History

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2023

Black history is under attack in a number of states. Clifton’s poetry can help us push back.

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Clifton, the Sonora Desert, & Resilience

By Robin Bates | Published: January 4, 2023

Clifton’s poem on the Sonora Desert does a deep dive into cactus symbolism

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A Coal Poem for Attorney Woo

By Robin Bates | Published: October 2, 2022

In an episode of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” we encounter a poem about charcoal and selflessness.

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i beg what i love and leave to forgive me

By Robin Bates | Published: October 1, 2022

Yom Kippur is a day to ask for forgiveness so that we may leave our sins behind and begin a new. In that respect, this Clifton poem works as a Yom Kippur poem.

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Butler’s Nightmare Climate Change Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2022

In “Parable of the Sower,” Butler foresees the human toll of climate change but also looks for hope in our response.

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Clifton’s Spiritual Meditations on 9-11

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2022

In spiritual meditations on 9-11, Lucille Clifton draws both on her own faith and other faith traditions to find hope.

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Gun Violence and Armageddon

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2022

Wednesday This past Sunday I shared a number of poems from Lucille Clifton’s Book of Days to reflect on how Christian nationalists, many of them wielding weapons of war, work against Jesus’s goal to bring the kingdom of God to Earth. One poem from the collection particularly stands out in the wake of the mass […]

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Thy Will Be Done on Earth

By Robin Bates | Published: May 28, 2022

Lucille Clifton’s final book of poems call out some of the blindnesses of Christian fundamentalists.

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