Edited with a Foreword by Aracelis Girmay, How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates famous poems and shines light on lesser-known poems by poet―and national treasure―Lucille Clifton (1936-2010).
Lucille Clifton's poetry defined strength through adversity focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Clifton's poems were widely celebrated during her lifetime, and she received wide acclaim for her work including the National Book Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems continue to inspire a new generation of readers and writers in the 21st century.
In How to Carry Water, formidable younger poet Aracelis Girmay (winner of the Whiting Award, GLCA Award, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) introduces a selection of Clifton's work that is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today's tumultuous social and political moment.
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the woman who feels everything sits in her new house waiting for someone to come who knows how to carry water without spilling, who knows why the desert is sprinkled with salt, why tomorrow is such a long, ominous word WATER SIGN WOMAN
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(@boaeditions, 8 September 2020, ebook, 278 pages, #ARC from publisher via @edelweiss_squad)
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I was familiar with the poet's work before this but hadn't read a lot. I really enjoyed this poetry collection so clearly I've been missing out. Clifton writes about themes that are universal such as love, family, grief and that sort of thing. She also writes about ideas and experiences that are very different from my own such as slavery and the experiences of black poetry. I found these types of poems the most powerful and dazzling in this selected collection. I enjoyed every poem and savoured the words, ideas and images. Among my favourites was After The Children Died She Started. As He Was Dying, Chemotherapy, Dialysis, Here Yet Be Dragons and Leda.
