Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

HOW TO CARRY WATER

Lucille Clifton

Selected Poems

How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America's most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected.

These poems celebrating black womanhood and resilience shimmer with intellect, insight, humor, and joy, all in Clifton's characteristic style?a voice that the late Toni Morrison described as seductive with the simplicity of an atom, which is to say highly complex, explosive underneath an apparent quietude. Selected and introduced by award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay, this volume of Clifton's poetry is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today's tumultuous moment.

Lucille Clifton (19362010) 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.

Available products
Book Published 2020-09-01 by BOA Editions

Comments

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.

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

"This slim but substantial volume streamlines Clifton's strongest work, enabling readers to better see and enjoy the micro and macro impact of her astonishing career."

This new career-spanning selection of her poetry is the book Clifton's readers have been waiting for. Edited by Aracelis Girmay, a breathtaking poet in her own right, this is the Clifton collection that will be the standard text for decades. (Best Books of 2020)

"Clifton's poems are profound and powerful to behold." (starred review)

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.