study the masters
like my aunt timmie.it was her iron,or one like hers,that smoothed the sheetsthe master poet slept on.home or hotel, what matters ishe lay himself down on her handiworkand dreamed. she dreamed too, words:some cherokee, some masai and somehuge and particular as hope.if you had heard herchanting as she ironedyou would understand form and lineand discipline and order andamerica.
Feature Date
- January 17, 2022
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“study the masters” from HOW TO CARRY WATER: SELECTED POEMS OF LUCILLE CLIFTON: by Lucille Clifton.
Published by BOA Editions September 8th, 2020.
Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd. 2020.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Mark Lennihan
Lucille Clifton (1936 – 2010) was an award winning poet, fiction writer, and author of children’s books. Her poetry collection, Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA, 2000), won the National Book Award for Poetry. In 1988 she became the only author to have two collections selected in the same year as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir (BOA, 1987), and Next: New Poems (BOA, 1987). In 1996, her collection The Terrible Stories (BOA, 1996), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Among her many other awards and accolades are the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Frost Medal, and an Emmy Award. In 2013, her posthumously published collection The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 (BOA, 2012), was awarded the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry.
“Clifton was one of America’s great poets, whose work throughout her lifetime was committed to chronicling and celebrating black lives. The honesty, joy, wisdom, and hope she brought to this task is regenerative.”
—Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate
“Clifton’s earliest poems could have been written yesterday, and her later works could have been written decades ago. Each poem is always its own world. Her poems touch on the political, the personal, the spiritual.”
—Reginald Dwayne Betts, The New York Times
“Open up to any page and Clifton delivers a word. Whether the subject is roaches, family, death, or surviving, she has a psalm for all occasions. She can create the most complicated magic out of the simplest words.”
—Danez Smith, The Week
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
