SOURCE: "Preservation Poets," in The New York Times Book Review, March 1, 1992, pp. 22-3.

Below, poet and critic Bennett discusses Clifton's thematic exploration of cultural and personal history in Quilting: Poems 1987-90.

Readers familiar with Ms. Clifton will find in Quilting, her seventh book of poetry, the kind of work they expect from her: poems of witness on racial themes; celebrations of women; personal poems of self, family and her vocation as poet; visionary poems taking off from the Bible. She is a passionate, mercurial writer, by turns angry, prophetic, compassionate, shrewd, sensuous, vulnerable and funny.

The title and construction of Quilting suggest its strategy; four of the book's five sections—"Log Cabin," "Catalpa Flower," "Eight-Pointed Star" and "Tree of Life"—are named for traditional quilt designs and represent a stitching together of various, and varicolored, pieces of an individual life (the fifth section, "Prayer," consists of a single...