Lucille Clifton

A new book celebrates the career of former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton , including her thoughts on topics from Sunday dinner to cancer, her hips to racism. In the Baltimore Sun, Mary McCauley highlights “The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010,” which includes a foreword by Toni Morrison. McCauley offers a Q&A with poet Michael Glaser, who co-edited the book with Kevin Young, curator of the Emory University archives where Clifton's papers are held.

Sunday, Oct. 28 Concert Sundays At Three Chamber Music Series presents Baltimore Symphony Orchestra cellist Bo Li and pianist Kuei-l Wu, joined by violinist Ronald Mutchnik, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28 at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road in Columbia. Tickets are $15; free for those ages 17 and younger accompanied by a paying adult. Information: 443-288-3179 or sundaysatthree.org. 'Bunnicula' Red Branch Theatre Company brings this classic children's book to the stage at the Drama Learning Center, 9130 Red Branch Road in Columbia.

As admirers and friends of the late Lucille Clifton, a former poet laureate of Maryland, continued to mourn her passing, plans were finalized Tuesday for a pair of memorial services in her honor -- one for family and close friends, the other for the public. The first gathering will be held at noon Thursday at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center in Columbia, the town that Clifton, a native of upstate New York, had adopted as her home many years ago. The public memorial is scheduled for April 10, at 7:30 p.m., in Montgomery Hall on the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, where Clifton had been a member of the faculty from 1989 until she retired in 2007.

Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton was a former "Jeopardy" champion who used a Ouija board to communicate with her dead mother. She was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who as an adult unabashedly celebrated her physical self. And in the newly released, 720-page volume of her collected poems, Clifton writes about cancer and racism and motherhood and her hips. "The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010" includes a foreword by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton was a former "Jeopardy" champion who used a Ouija board to communicate with her dead mother. She was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who as an adult unabashedly celebrated her physical self. And in the newly released, 720-page volume of her collected poems, Clifton writes about cancer and racism and motherhood and her hips. "The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010" includes a foreword by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Former state poet laureate Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award winner whose work was lauded for its "moral quality," died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital after a long battle with cancer and other illnesses. She was 73. With a mix of profundity, earthiness and humor - amply evident in her 11 books of poetry - Ms. Clifton often defied conventional notions of poetic expression, but in many ways her themes were traditional, Wallace R. Peppers wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Lucille Clifton credits her six children with inspiring much of her work. They taught her patience, she says. They also kept her humble.She tells a story about reading her award-winning poems at the Library of Congress, then coming home to iron clothes. "What is this great poet doing ironing?" she wondered aloud. "The kids laughed, saying, 'Are you crazy?' And I came back to earth."Ms. Clifton will read her poetry at the St. Mary's College Literary Festival in St. Mary's City. Taking place today, tomorrow and May 26 to 28, the festival is a series of poetry and fiction readings beginning and ending the St. Mary's College third annual summer writing workshop.

Former Poet Laureate of Maryland and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Lucille Clifton will read from her poetry at the Howard County East Columbia branch library tomorrow.rTC Her reading will be part of an annual event to raise money for the Friends of the Howard County library, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining the library's excellence. Tickets for the 7 p.m. event are $15 for adults and $5 for students.Mrs. Clifton said she might read from her new book of poems, "The Terrible Stories," which will be released next year.

QUILTING: POEMS 1987-1990.Lucille Clifton.BOA Editions. 89 pages. $12 paper. Lucille Clifton's seventh book of poems is perhaps the strongest evocation to date of one of America's most consistent and powerful poetic voices. In this new book, which is organized around the metaphor of quilting, Ms. Clifton -- a former Maryland poet laureate who now is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College -- returns to the themes of community, family, love, myth and language that have been her trademark since her poems began appearing in the late 1960s.

In her unassuming home in Owen Brown village she's a neighbor, mother, grandmother and friend. To the rest of the world, Lucille Clifton is an award-winning poet, a weaver of words about life, living and love.Today Mrs. Clifton will share some of her work along with poets Sharon Olds and Galaway Kinnel in the sold-out performance of "Poetry of Love."The 4 p.m. reading at Slayton House, in which poets will take turns performing their work to create a sort of three-way poetic conversation, is part of the Columbia Festival of the Arts.

A new book celebrates the career of former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton , including her thoughts on topics from Sunday dinner to cancer, her hips to racism. In the Baltimore Sun, Mary McCauley highlights “The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010,” which includes a foreword by Toni Morrison. McCauley offers a Q&A with poet Michael Glaser, who co-edited the book with Kevin Young, curator of the Emory University archives where Clifton's papers are held.

As admirers and friends of Lucille Clifton, a former poet laureate of Maryland, continued to mourn her passing, plans were completed Tuesday for a pair of memorial services in her honor - one for family and close friends, the other for the public. The first gathering will be held at noon Thursday at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center in Columbia, the town that Clifton, a native of upstate New York, had adopted as her home many years ago. The public memorial is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. April 10 in Montgomery Hall on the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where Clifton had been a member of the faculty from 1989 until she retired in 2007.

As admirers and friends of the late Lucille Clifton, a former poet laureate of Maryland, continued to mourn her passing, plans were finalized Tuesday for a pair of memorial services in her honor -- one for family and close friends, the other for the public. The first gathering will be held at noon Thursday at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center in Columbia, the town that Clifton, a native of upstate New York, had adopted as her home many years ago. The public memorial is scheduled for April 10, at 7:30 p.m., in Montgomery Hall on the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, where Clifton had been a member of the faculty from 1989 until she retired in 2007.

Former state poet laureate Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award winner whose work was lauded for its "moral quality," died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital after a long battle with cancer and other illnesses. She was 73. With a mix of profundity, earthiness and humor - amply evident in her 11 books of poetry - Ms. Clifton often defied conventional notions of poetic expression, but in many ways her themes were traditional, Wallace R. Peppers wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Voices By Lucille Clifton BOA Editions / 59 pages / $22.95 Although National Book Award winner and former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton is a woman of few words, she makes each of them count. Her latest book, Voices, continues Clifton's tradition of autobiographical Zenlike poems showcasing Clifton's instinct for the evocative image and the just-right ending. Most of the poems personify inanimate things as well as plants, animals and deceased family members. Several poems concern growing up a black woman in a white culture.

Salute to women -- The Women's Giving Circle of Howard County will sponsor a reading by poet Lucille Clifton (above) in a "Salute to Women in the Arts" from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday in the Monteabaro Recital Hall of the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. The event, which honors female arts organizers and artists who have benefited Columbia, includes a champagne reception. Admission is free, but reservations are required.

THE MAN IN THE governor's office hoped she would write poetry about Maryland and, of course, she did, but not in the way he had in mind. She should write about new malls or in honor of the governor on his birthday, it was thought when the title, poet laureate of Maryland, was conferred in 1979. But Lucille Clifton, who lives in Columbia and teaches at St. Mary's College, wrote about love and loss, about her husband's death, about the children who wanted to give her a kidney, about home.

For Columbia poet Lucille Clifton, the act of naming - an object, a pet, a person - is an act of aggression almost akin to a declaration of war. "There's a kind of arrogance in thinking that the name I give something is what it calls itself," she says. "It's demeaning. Once we have given something a name, we expect it to be that thing. I don't know what the cow calls itself, nor what it calls me - nor, I suspect, would I want to." It's unclear whether Clifton is referring to the cow jumping over the moon, the mad cow, the sacred cow or some other type of grass-muncher.