Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (American Poets Continuum) (Paperback)

by Lucille Clifton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Clifton's poems owe a great deal to oral tradition. Her work is wonderfully musical and benefits greatly from being read aloud: "It is hard to remain human on a day/ when birds perch weeping/ in the trees and the squirrel eyes/ do not look away but the dog ones do/ in pity." Her keen sense of rhythm, of the sound, tone, and texture of words, is delightful, a rare find in this day and age. The language is crystal clear and deceptively accessible. The poems are personal, but the distant thunder of history rumbles behind every line. As she says on seeing a photograph: "is it the cut glass/ of their eyes/ looking up toward/ the new gnarled branch/ of the black man/ hanging from a tree?" Clifton's work hearkens back to the days of the Black Arts Movement and sheds light on the new black aesthetic. These are economical slices of ordinary life, celebrations, if you will, of African American existence. With simple language and common sense, she writes of grace, character, and race by way of the personal and familiar. Clifton's voice, her unique vision and wisdom, make this book essential for any serious poetry collection.
-Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Birds and foxes appear in Clifton's poems, and it's easy to see why their quicksilver energy and grace, their bright knowingness and oneness with the earth, appeal to her: when she puts pen to paper, she is their sister. Clifton's poems are lean, agile, and accurate, and there is beauty in their directness and efficiency, an element, too, of surprise. New poems set this powerful volume in motion, and just like her much-praised earlier work, they address the tragic and the inexplicable. Clifton writes about children killing children, a father abusing a daughter, white men killing black men, and other confounding forms of madness. She ponders mysteries both immediate and theological, including cancer's voraciousness, banishment from the Garden of Eden, and Lazarus' return to the land of the living, and she approaches them with pleasing matter-of-factness. Clifton is valiant and curious, saddened but seasoned. There is strength in these spare yet musical poems, and faith in the power of expression. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 145 pages
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd. (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880238888
• ISBN-13: 978-1880238882
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #256,322 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucille, Light-Bringer, May 1, 2000

By	crumbcake (Rhinebeck, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Clifton's poems enter sacred places, not only by their subject matter (human suffering at biblical proportions, or biblical suffering at human proportions), but because of their method of engagement--a direct and immediate engagement with what is "human."

The section of new poems (which begins the book) opens with a devastating poem about recent school shootings, and continues with poems more blisteringly honest and raw (if such can even be conceived by long time readers!) than any Clifton has written before. Some of the previous themes (childhood abuse, cancer, biblical re-tellings) are re-visited at such an excruciating level of intensity, that one thinks Clifton is preparing to leave certain subjects (for a time, perhaps) and launch herself into the next great "Era" of her writing life.

The book is a book of transformations, of all the "boats" in our lives, that carry us from place to place, and we are blessed indeed to be accompanied on our long journeys by Lucille Clifton.

The nineteen new poems are followed by sixteen from "Next," twenty three from "Quilting," fifteen from "the book of ligtht," and eighteen from "the terrible stories." Clifton's book are assembled so artfully as books that it is hard to imagine how she (or her editor) made the choices for the volume. In the end, they prioritized cohesivesness as a volume, choosing whole sequences from the earlier books, rather than the "Greatest Hits" approach. The result is that some readers (including this humble one) may find some favorite poems from the earlier volumes missing, (this is particularly true of the choices from "Next") but the the book, in and of itself has its own true spirit.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry does not exist to make you comfortable, April 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-20 (American Poets Continuum) (Hardcover)

I feel compelled to respond to the person who found the opening poem "racist" because the speaker says "another child has killed a child / and i catch myself relieved that they are / white."

First of all, the fact that a poem depicts a certain attitude or feeling does not mean that the poet endorses that attitude or feeling. In this case, the sentiment is honest even if it is not morally admirable. Poetry does not always depict life or human nature as we would like them to be, but rather as they are.

Second, the last line of the poem says "these too are your children this too is your child." So the poem has corrected the speaker's own withdrawal from the scene. It ends, I think, with a rejection of racism...but it could be a good poem even if it did not.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful testament from a passionate poetic voice, September 18, 2002

By	Michael J. Mazza (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

I have admired Lucille Clifton's clear, strong poetic voice for many years, and I was really impressed by her book "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000." Clifton covers a lot of ground in this collection: racial violence, surviving cancer, language, drug addiction, the female body, and more. There are many poems inspired by biblical characters. Some highlights are as follows:

"Sorrow Song": a global vision of human evil and suffering. "female": a poem that declares "there is an amazon in us." "shapeshifter poems": a powerful sequence. "here be dragons": a poem that begins "So many languages have fallen / off the edge of the world / into the dragon's mouth." I also loved the poems that celebrate (and sometimes mourn) the female body: "poem in praise of menstruation," "poem to my uterus," "to my last period," etc.

When she's at her strongest, Clifton attains a truly prophetic quality. I recommend this book both to those who've read and loved her for years as well as to newcomers to this important poetic voice. If you like Clifton, I also recommend the writings of June Jordan and Audre Lorde.