SOURCE: Pohl, R. D. “Words of Comfort from The Book of Light.” Buffalo News (6 January 2002): E6.

In the following excerpt, Pohl comments on the significance of Clifton's poetry in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and highlights Clifton's life and works.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, there are certain poets whose words resonate with particular significance.

Consider, for example, these stanzas from Buffalo native Lucille Clifton's “Report from the Angel of Eden,” a selection from her National Book Award winning collection Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 “a world was being born / I feared for their immortality / I feared for mine / under the strain of such desire // I knew / they could do evil / with it and I knew / they would.”

Even more prescient are these lines from “here yet be dragons,” originally published in her 1993 collection The Book of Light...