This volume represents all the poems Lucille Clifton published in book form during her lifetime. It also includes groupings of previously uncollected poems placed in the book roughly when they were written: first, a selection of “Early Uncollected Poems” from the many Clifton wrote and kept but did not gather in her first full-length book, Good Times (1969); second, we have included a recently discovered typescript, “Book of Days,” that Clifton seems to have completed during 2006; and, finally, a grouping of “Last Poems & Drafts” that include late work and fragments, in various states of completion, found among her papers housed at Emory University. In all cases we have maintained the unique typography (and handwriting) found in her uncollected work.
We have not gathered here Clifton’s few occasional poems—with rare exceptions, sprinkled as “Uncollected Poems” throughout—nor any poems she published in magazines but left uncollected in book form during her lifetime. This volume also does not include her powerful memoir, Generations, which may still be found in Good Woman, the first of her selected poems. We also do not include her many works written for children. A bibliography at the back of the book reveals the breadth of her literary production.
In all, the Collected Poems offers readers a sense of Clifton’s poetic development from her earliest work to her last.
—Kevin Young & Michael S. Glaser