Critically acclaimed poet Lucille Clifton has died.
The Pulitzer Prize nominated poet began her career with the collection Good Times. She also published seven books with BOA Editions, including Next: New Poems and Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir. Among her many awards and achievements, Clifton was the first African American woman to receive the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In addition, she had received an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Poetry Society of America’s Centennial Frost Medal for 2010.
BOA Editions editor Thom Ward had this statement: “Clifton’s poems have their own special ‘signature’ as, say, the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson. Mixing spare, muscular, visual language, a deft balance of idea and image with powerful silences and taut line-breaks–you always know when you are in the presence of a Clifton poem.”
The complete BOA Editions release is embedded after the jump.