Product Description

A collection of poetry by the Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author of Quilting features works that locate the eternal sublime amid mundane experience. Simultaneous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156273 in Books
• Published on: 1992-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Clifton's ( Quilting ) latest collection clearly demonstrates why she was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. These poems contain all the simplicity and grace readers have come to expect from her work. The first few pages set the title in a larger perspective at the same time that they announce the book's premise: "woman, i am / lucille, which stands for light." This is a feminist version of Roots , charged with outrage at the sins done to women of previous generations. There are the typical heroes and anti-heroes: Atlas, Sisyphus, Leda, biblical women--but even these tired figures are given a new, often comic, twist: Naomi, for example, doesn't want Ruth's devotion, just to be left alone to "grieve in peace"; several poems are addressed to Clark Kent as the speaker comes to terms with the realization that he doesn't have the power to save her after all. And what do today's women have instead of superheroes? Jesse Helms; fathers who "burned us all." Though it is based more or less in traditional Christianity, the poetry also is concerned with how spirituality can be personal. Low key and poignant, poem after poem takes the form of a conversation, whether woman to her dead parents, Lucifer to God, or poet to reader.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A 1996 National Book Award nominee for The Terrible Stories, African American poet Clifton writes with "the passion of a born survivor" (The Book of Light,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
11/10 Again
Atlas
Being Here
Brothers: 1. Invitation
Brothers: 2. How Great Thou Art
Brothers: 3. As For Myself
Brothers: 4. In My Own Defense
Brothers: 5. The Road Led From Delight
Brothers: 6. 'the Silence Of God Is God.'
Brothers: 7. Still There Is Mercy, There Is Grace
Brothers: 8. '............is God.'
C.c. Rider
Cain
Cigarettes
Crabbing
Dear Jesse Helms
Each Morning I Pull Myself
The Earth Is A Living Thing
Far Memory: 1. Convent
Far Memory: 2. Someone Inside Me Remembers
Far Memory: 3. Again
Far Memory: 4. Trying To Understand This Life
Far Memory: 5. Sinnerman
Far Memory: 6. Karma
Far Memory: 7. Gloria Mundi
Final Note To Clark
For Roddy
Further Note To Clark
Fury
Here Yet Be Dragons
If I Should
Imagining Bear
It Was A Dream
January 1991
Leda 1
Leda 2: A Note On Visitations
Leda 3: A Personal Note (re: Visitations)
Move
My Lost Father
Naomi Watches As Ruth Sleeps
Night Vision
Note Passed To Superman
Nothing About The Moment
The Rough Weight Of It
Samson Predicts From Gaza The Philadelphia Fire
Sarah's Promise
Seeker Of Visions
She Lived
Song At Midnight
Thel
Them And Us
The Women You Are Accustomed To
Won't You Celebrate With Me
The Yeti Poet Returns To His Village To Tell His Story
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Customer Reviews

A beautiful, heartfelt, heart-full collection of poetry...
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.

Highly recommended
It's hard to believe what Lucille Clifton can do with a handful of lines of poetry. She is our modern-day Emily Dickinson and despite all the praise that she's received over her career, it's not nearly enough. In her best work -- which is most of her work -- it's as if her intelligence cracks open a hole in the sky, a revelation that approaches religious experience. Book of Light is to my mind her very best book. It includes poem cycles based on both classical pagan mythology and judeo-christian scriptures, most notably a fabulous monologue in which Satan addresses God -- the best and most interesting use of Satan in English poetry since John Milton.

Delightful Collection
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.