Tag Archives: Lucille Clifton

June Love, Simple and Entire

For a June poem, here’s Richard Wilbur reminiscing about young love.

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Trump, Clifton, & Immigrants as Animals

Trump describing immigrants as animals is scary stuff, as this Lucille Clifton poem makes clear.

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Light Breaks Where No Light Was Before

Lucille Clifton’s Lucifer poems are more pentecostal than diabolic.

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Sending Students Out into the World

On Saturday at our commencement ceremony, I read C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka.” It was a great selection for a number of reasons.

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Inspired by MLK and Lucille Clifton

To honor Martin Luther King, I share a hard-hitting but hopeful Lucille Clifton essay by a first-year African-American student who is fulfilling his dream.

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Trouble Recovering My French

Lines from Lucille Clifton’s “i am accused of tending to the past,” wrenched out of context, describe by experience with French at the moment

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we have always loved each other

Ushering in Black History Month with a lovely Lucille Clifton poem about the need to keep believing in oneself.

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A Herculean Task: Purging Old Files

I’ve spent the last couple of days going through my father’s files (and throwing most of them away). I feel like Heracles cleaning out the Augean stables, as described by Seamus Heaney.

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Black Women as Saviors? Clifton Objects

Some are sanctifying black women voters for saving America from itself after Democratic victories in Virginia and Alabama. Lucille Clifton points out that sanctification isn’t much better than demonization.

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