Lucille Clifton

wishes for sons by Lucille Clifton i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish…

— Lucille Clifton

“these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places.”

— Lucille Clifton

“a tongue blistered with smiling”

— Lucille Clifton

Intellect doesn't translate across cultures; intuition does.

— Lucille Clifton

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

— Lucille Clifton

I keep hearing tree talk water words and i keep knowing what they mean.

— Lucille Clifton

You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.

— Lucille Clifton

“walked erect out of my sleep”

— Lucille Clifton

In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be…

— Lucille Clifton

If i should enter the house and speak with my own voice, at last, about its awful furnitutre, pulling apart the covering…

— Lucille Clifton

telling the truth about children's lives is radical.

— Lucille Clifton

To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.

— Lucille Clifton

“i am rejuvenated bones rising from the dear floor where they found you”

— Lucille Clifton

“they will empty your eyes of everything you love”

— Lucille Clifton

All people, even one's own children, come with baggage. When they're little, you have to help them carry it. But when they…

— Lucille Clifton

Say it clear, and it will be beautiful.

— Lucille Clifton

the lesson of the falling leaves the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace…

— Lucille Clifton

they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine

— Lucille Clifton

Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.

— Lucille Clifton

I don't go get a poem. It calls me and I accept it.

— Lucille Clifton

“listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need a map…

— Lucille Clifton

I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair…

— Lucille Clifton

I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody…

— Lucille Clifton

“her dangling braids the color of rain.”

— Lucille Clifton

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more…

— Lucille Clifton