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by: Hilary Holladay
List Price: $38.95Amazon.com's Price: $33.11 You Save: $5.84 (15%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780807129876
ISBN: 0807129879
Label: Louisiana State University Press
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 232
Publication Date: August 30, 2004
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Sales Rank: 400822
Studio: Louisiana State University Press
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Book Description:
Widely acclaimed for her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, spirituality, and mortality, poet Lucille Clifton has published ten volumes of poems since 1969 and has received numerous accolades for her work, including the 2000 National Book Award for Blessing the Boats. Her verse is featured in almost every anthology of contemporary poetry, and her readings draw large and enthusiastic audiences. Although Clifton’s poetry is a pleasure to read, it is neither as simple nor as blithely celebratory as readers sometimes assume. The bursts of joy found in her polished, elegant lines are frequently set against a backdrop of regret and sorrow. Alternately consoling, stimulating, and emotionally devastating, Clifton’s poems are unforgettable.
In Wild Blessings, Hilary Holladay offers the first full-length study of Clifton’s poetry, drawing on a broad knowledge of the American poetic tradition and African American poetry in particular. Holladay places Clifton’s poems in multiple contexts—personal, political, and literary—as she explicates major themes and analyzes specific works: Clifton’s poems about womanhood, a central concern throughout her career; her fertility poems, which are provocatively compared with Sylvia Plath’s poems on the same subject; her relation to the Black Arts Movement and to other black female poets, such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez; her biblical poems; her elegies; and her poignant family history, Generations, an extended prose poem. This illuminating book concludes with a wide-ranging interview with Clifton, in which she discusses her poetry and private life.
Readers encountering Lucille Clifton’s poems for the first time and those long familiar with her distinctive voice will benefit from Hilary Holladay’s perceptive and striking insights into the work of a leading American poet.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Being Blessed
Hilary Holladay's Wild Blessings is a well-written, well-researched critical study. It offers insight into the professional, as well as private, world of famed poet Lucille Clifton. Clifton is an incredibly talented writer, as well as a prolific speaker and activist. Holladay makes good use of these talents and brings them to the forefront in this illuminating book about the artist. Personally, after reading Wild Blessings, I had a better, much deeper, appreciation for Clifton and her work. ... Read More
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