Lucille Clifton's Book of Light manages to convey some of the joy of the author. The poems are simple but their message is not. A wonderful book to serve as an introduction to one of American's premiere poets.

I was fortunate enough to hear Ms. Clifton read from this and other works at a small reading in Southern Maryland a few summers back...her rich, resonant voice was the pefect accompaniment to her heartfelt-yet-spare language. In the "Clark Kent" series of poems in this collection, she slays the reader in a single line that cuts through the pretty prose one might find in another poet's work, arriving at the heart of disappointed love ("the question for you is/what have you ever traveled toward/more than your own safety?). In another favorite, "still there is mercy, there is grace," she celebrates the quiet, filling grace of god (how otherwise/could i, a sleek old/traveler/curl one day safe and still/ beside You/at Your feet, perhaps/but, amen, Yours) From love to God---and maybe the two, of course, aren't at such a distance---to everything in between, Ms. Clifton captures what it is to be, to feel, to connect with others...and while some of her poetry also beautifully and mystically celebrates and mourns the experiences of African Americans, her voice is too universal, in my opinion, to categorize; there wasn't a word in this collection that failed to cross over color and burrow itself right into the heart of the whole color spectrum of human experience. If you can hear her read, don't miss it, but if you can't, her voice will sing through from the pages with clarity and grace.

This is a simply written book about a little boy who goes through the five stages of grief after the death of his father. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful and the book still brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it. Lucille Clifton is an excellent author who uses simplicity with great beauty. This book is good for young children 3-5 who are trying to understand and deal with grief. I would definitely recommend this with no hesitation!

This is absolutely the best book out there for a young child who has lost a parent. Written by Lucille Cliffton in simple rhyme, it goes through the 5 stages of grief. As the last stage of grief is acceptance, it ends with "and no matter what happens when people die, love doesn't stop and neither will I." The illustrations of this young African American boy and his mother are charcoal line drawings ~~ beautifully illustrating the profound loss this child has suffered, affirming the loss and yet reassuring the reader that acceptance and peace will come.

if the name 'lucille' means 'light bearer'' this book filfulls that promise. poets read her work to learn how to compress wit and gravity into a very few lines. i read read this about a decade ago and just looking at the table of contents on Poem Finder bought back a few of the lines -- i forgive my body/ i forgive my blood

Lucille Clifton's GOOD WOMAN is an excellent volume of poetry. Moreover, the memoir challenges the traditional exercise of writing the self and experience that merits articulation. Clifton's poems and imagery rarely disappoint, but name the unspoken and bring greater consciousness and empowerment.

Lucille Clifton has always been one of my favorite poets. Her accessible poetry captures in moving, eloquent verse living in the world. Her unique voice speaks in language that is not unnecessarily dense and "cerebral": an especially desirable trait given the frequently written complaint regarding lack of readership for modern poetry. Lucille Clifton writes poetry we ALL can relate to, not just the academics and, to be a little unkind, poetry "snobs". Recommended highly.

I love reading Lucille Clifton's poetry. I get a real sense of her person, her pain, her history. Some poems are so moving, I can't help but cry. I am stunned to find such fine wording, the way she knows just what word to use. Some of her word choices are unusual....they're not a way that one would have thought of that word, but in the context of the poem, the word finds a home, makes sense. Additionally, she expresses her appreciation of the earth in almost religious terms; her exploration of religion in her poetry is extremely appealing to me. She seems to have a sense of appreciation for, and sympathetic understanding of, the characters (Job, Moses especially) in the Bible, I feel closer to them myself when viewing them through her eyes. I like this book also because you feel the strength of the woman behind the words, she's wise, she's had her pain, but she's able to celebrate those things in life that are worth celebrating -- love, family, simple pleasures and even her own hair and hips. I love too many poems to list here, but you should go to your library and read these poems; even if you don't buy the book, these poems should find a place in your life: Salt, The Lesson of the Falling Leaves, Mary, Cutting Greens....so many more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I feel compelled to respond to the person who found the opening poem "racist" because the speaker says "another child has killed a child / and i catch myself relieved that they are / white."

First of all, the fact that a poem depicts a certain attitude or feeling does not mean that the poet endorses that attitude or feeling. In this case, the sentiment is honest even if it is not morally admirable. Poetry does not always depict life or human nature as we would like them to be, but rather as they are.

Second, the last line of the poem says "these too are your children this too is your child." So the poem has corrected the speaker's own withdrawal from the scene. It ends, I think, with a rejection of racism...but it could be a good poem even if it did not.

I have admired Lucille Clifton's clear, strong poetic voice for many years, and I was really impressed by her book "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000." Clifton covers a lot of ground in this collection: racial violence, surviving cancer, language, drug addiction, the female body, and more. There are many poems inspired by biblical characters. Some highlights are as follows:

"Sorrow Song": a global vision of human evil and suffering. "female": a poem that declares "there is an amazon in us." "shapeshifter poems": a powerful sequence. "here be dragons": a poem that begins "So many languages have fallen / off the edge of the world / into the dragon's mouth." I also loved the poems that celebrate (and sometimes mourn) the female body: "poem in praise of menstruation," "poem to my uterus," "to my last period," etc.

When she's at her strongest, Clifton attains a truly prophetic quality. I recommend this book both to those who've read and loved her for years as well as to newcomers to this important poetic voice. If you like Clifton, I also recommend the writings of June Jordan and Audre Lorde.

Some books excel beyond the 5-star limit offered here. This is one of them. Lucille Clifton has a magical, inexplicable way bring the most unpoetic subjects to life--including incest, racism, Lucifer, Eve, and the human body. Clifton's poems exude truth and she isn't afraid to write from the somewhat underrepresented perspective of an African American woman. Even the poems that seem to have a narrow audience (Wishes for Sons, To my Last Period) manage to have a universal quality about them. I've been extremely fortunate to hear her read twice--the only thing that improves upon the purchase of this book is hearing the sublime Ms. Clifton in person. Her voice captivates and reasonates from the pages of her books. Anyone who finds these poems offensive should consider the element of truth in each and every one of them.

"The Terrible Stories," by Lucille Clifton, is a collection of poems that are written in a clear, straightforward style. The themes that strike me as most present in the collection are loss, loneliness, and the burdens of history. The poems within the book are grouped into a number of sequences.

There is a sequence of poems about an encounter with a fox; for me this sequence brings to mind larger issues of human-animal relations. I found the most powerful sequence to be about breast cancer. In the first poem in that sequence, Clifton evokes "audre" (i.e. Audre Lorde, another poet who has written eloquently on breast cancer). Also very moving is "lumpectomy eve," which captures the tenderness of "one breast / comforting the other."

Some poems explore the connection between African-Americans and Africa (these specific poems are "hag riding," "shadows," and "memphis"). Some poems are more overtly political or sociological. "the son of medgar," for example, deals with the trial of the assassin of Medgar Evers. "lorena" is a surprisingly gentle poem which evokes the story of a real-life woman who sexually mutilated her husband.

The final sequence in the book, "From the Book of David," draws from the biblical narratives of King David. These poems explore the violence of David's life, and seem to be asking how we can reconcile David the warrior with David the poet.

Clifton writes with a quiet power in this collection. I recommend this book to all those interested in poetry, African-American studies, and/or women's studies.

Clifton writes with great intensity about personal experiences in her poetry. This is a small collection that is powerful and the individual poems stay with you long after you've closed the bok.

If you've ever read any of Lucille Clifton's work, you know how brilliant she is. This book is no exception. It's just one more volume in an ever-increasingly large body or work. The poems in this book are just as beautiful as anything else she's ever written, if not more beuatiful.

This is great book for kids to read to help them realize that sometimes bad things can lead to good things. Also, it is all right for boys and girls to play together.

This book shares the thoughts and stories of young african american children.As the kids speak up you will here the palm of there hart speaking to you. There are just great stories some happy some sad and some tell you just how much different there lifestyle is from ours.the kids will take you to there world and express there heart.