Literary Birthday – 27 June – Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was born 27 June 1936, and died 13 February 2010.

Lucille Clifton Quotes

1. Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.
2. Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.
3. You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
4. I 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.
5. What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.
6. People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that’s a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.
7. We cannot create what we can’t imagine.

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator. She was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 to 1985. Her collections, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Two-Headed Woman, were both Pulitzer Prize nominees.

Source for image: Fair Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lucille_clifton.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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