We cannot create what we can't imagine. Lucille Clifton More Quotes by Lucille Clifton More Quotes From Lucille Clifton may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back Lucille Clifton kissingmaywind don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions. Lucille Clifton writingartthinking I don't go get a poem. It calls me and I accept it. Lucille Clifton call-meaccepting the lost women I need to know their names those women I would have walked with, jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom I would have joined After a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? Lucille Clifton teambeermen wishes for sons by Lucille Clifton i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves. Lucille Clifton believesonthinking Children when they ask you why your mama so funny say she is a poet she don't have no sense Lucille Clifton mamafunnychildren I keep hearing tree talk water words and i keep knowing what they mean. Lucille Clifton knowingwatermean You cannot play for safety and make art. Lucille Clifton safetyplayart To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer. Lucille Clifton poetcarewriting Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing. Lucille Clifton knowingwonder My Mama Moved Among the Days My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was here seemed like what touched her couldn't hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in Lucille Clifton mamafieldsdream I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me. Lucille Clifton new-yearletting-gorunning If i should enter the house and speak with my own voice, at last, about its awful furnitutre, pulling apart the covering over the dusty bodies; the randy father, the husband holding ice in his hand like a blessing, the mother bleeding into herself and the small imploding girl, i say if i should walk into that web, who will come flying after me, leaping tall buildings? you? Lucille Clifton husbandgirlmother Tell the truth... maybe just to see clearly, as clearly as possible. Lucille Clifton telling-the-truthhealing The end of a thing, is never the end, something is always being born like a year of a baby. Lucille Clifton endsbabyyears telling the truth about children's lives is radical. Lucille Clifton telling-the-truthlife-ischildren I am a black woman poet and I sound like one. Lucille Clifton black-womenblacksound blessing the boats (at saint mary’s) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that Lucille Clifton kissingeyeblessing
