Clifton

By now, many people know Lucille Clifton has died. I got the news by text. I'm sure it fired across facebook and twitter too. Strange elegy, that kind of electricity. I passed the message along to a couple poet friends too, who hadn't yet heard.

If you can get, as William Carlos Williams said, news from poems, then Clifton's kind of news is celebration, good news -- gospel, one might say. It is the kind of work that people turn to for wisdom and charity. I certainly have.

I come from a family of workers, my parents both professionals, both my brothers artists who hold down demanding jobs, one at a design firm, the other a shop owner, all of whom have worked agonizing hours. My cousins and aunts and uncles are farmers and teachers. They've done this their whole working lives. Steady. They are big laughers, tricksters, storytellers, comedians. In this way, Clifton feels, literally, familiar. The steadiness of her work—joyful, full of trouble and laughter. A sort of cure to backroom snickers and headline gossip.

There is no poet who speaks with Clifton's directness and simplicity. And you can't mistake that directness and simplicity for efficiency. Her speech is a common elegance. Elsewhere, concision and bad irony, it seems, have become the rococo of our age. I don't mean to speak of her style or technique, her "craft" as its emphasized in professional writing programs. It's her spirit. A natural delight in spite of cleverness. There is no mistake that Clifton bled. It's in the very rhythms of the poems. It's the blood singing.

I imagine her work will continue to embolden generations to begin with questions, speak simply, tell the truth. I'll miss her terribly.