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Lucille Clifton Quotes

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. June 1936 – 13. February 2010
Lucille Clifton: 10 quotes0 likes

Famous Lucille Clifton Quotes

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

Lucille Clifton

“You might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking.”

Lucille Clifton

Source: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980

“the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves”

Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton Quotes

“I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.”

Lucille Clifton

“born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?”

Lucille Clifton

The Book of Light (1993), "song at midnight", lines 17–19
Works

“One thing poetry teaches us, if anything, is that everything is connected…There is so much history that we have not validated.”

Lucille Clifton

On her worldly view of poetry in “Poet Lucille Clifton: 'Everything Is Connected'” https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124113507 in NPR (2010 Feb 28)

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