How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton

Edited with a Foreword by Aracelis Girmay, How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates famous poems and shines light on lesser-known poems by poet―and national treasure―Lucille Clifton (1936–2010).Lucille Clifton’s poetry defined strength through adversity focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Clifton’s poems were widely celebrated during her lifetime, and she received wide acclaim for her work including the National Book Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems continue to inspire a new generation of readers and writers in the 21st century.In How to Carry Water, formidable younger poet Aracelis Girmay (winner of the Whiting Award, GLCA Award, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) introduces a selection of Clifton’s work that is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous social and political moment.