Study the Masters
- Study the Masters
Lucille Clifton: A Special Section
like my aunt timmie. it was her iron, or one like hers, that smoothed the sheets the master poet slept on. home or hotel, what matters is he lay himself down on her handiwork and dreamed. she dreamed too, words; some cherokee, some masai and some huge and particular as hope. if you had heard her chanting as she ironed you would understand form and line and discipline and order and america.
Lucille Clifton, who has won many prizes for her work, is author of thirty-two books of poetry for adults and prose for young readers. She is the only poet with two books as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize during the same year. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She has also served as Blackburn Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and as Poet Laureate of Maryland.
