“[Poetry is] a way of trying to come to peace with the world.” — poet Lucille Clifton

“[Poetry is] a way of trying to come to peace with the world.” — poet Lucille Clifton

It’s her birthday today. Rita Dove said of Lucille Clifton’s body of work: In contrast to much of the poetry being written today—-intellectualized lyricism characterized by an application of inductive thought to unusual images—-Lucille Clifton’s poems are compact and self-sufficient…Her revelations then resemble the epiphanies of childhood and early adolescence, when one’s lack of preconceptions about the self allowed for brilliant slippage into…