Award-winning African American poet Lucille Clifton received numerous honors for her literary work, served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland, and was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland where she taught for eighteen years. During her career she wrote thirteen books of poetry and more than sixteen children’s books. At age 58 (1994) Lucille Clifton was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The Terrible Stories is the title of the first book of poems Lucille Clifton published after her breast cancer diagnosis. I write about the significance of Clifton’s poetry in chapter 8 of Pink Ribbon Blues.
The book opens with a poem that speaks to the power of verse (p. 9).
Beginning week two of the Pink Ribbon Blues Poetry Jam, here is Lucille Clifton’s “telling our stories.”
telling our stories
by Lucille Clifton
the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.
at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.
did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?
child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.
Clifton’s poems about cancer were written as part of the tapestry of her creative life. [See my other essay on Lucille Clifton, “the terrible stories.”]
