Lucille Clifton's pride in being black and in being a woman helps her transform difficult circumstances into a qualified affirmation about the black urban world she portrays. She perceives in her own African heritage models for courage and endurance...

Thelma Lucille Sayles Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on 27 June 1936 and was educated at Fredonia State Teachers College, Fredonia, New York, and at Howard University, Washington, D.C. She began composing poems and writing stories at an early age...

Lucille Clifton's apparently simple poems have great spiritual depth. Her poetry is an expression of black pride and an exploration of myth and myth making. Her humorous perspective, noticeable in poems about her vocation, make Clifton's poems unusual. Clifton's poems, which have a recurrent...

THE FIRST THING that strikes us about Lucille Clifton's poetry is what is missing: capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. We see a poetry so pared down that its spaces take on substance, become a shaping presence as much as the words themselves....

In the following interview, originally conducted on August 2, 1998, Clifton discusses the themes of African-American ancestry and identity in her poetry.

In the following essay, Wall examines Clifton's exploration of the past through the reconstruction of family genealogy in Generations.

In the following essay, Hull explores the spiritual connection to African-American female ancestors in the poetry of Clifton and Dolores Kendrick.