Thirty years ago, BOA Editions published Lucille Clifton's Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir. Written by National Book Award-winning poet Lucille Clifton, Good Woman collected the first four poetry books that launched Clifton’s career—Good Times (1969), Good News About the Earth (1972), An Ordinary Woman (1974), and Two-Headed Woman (1980)—as well as her haunting prose memoir, Generations (1976). Selected as a finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Good Woman has become a beloved classic that celebrates the early career of one of America’s premier poets of the 20th century.
In honor of this auspicious anniversary, BOA Editions is thrilled to announce a deluxe eBook edition of Good Woman. This 30th anniversary eBook edition will feature a brand new foreword by Aracelis Gimay, author of the 2015 Whiting Award-winning collection the black maria.
“No one writes like Lucille Clifton,” Girmay writes in the foreword, “and yet, if it were possible to open a voice, like a suitcase, to see what it carries inside it, I believe that inside the voices of many of our most beloved, contemporary writers are the poems of Lucille Clifton. There is the ferocity of her clear sight, fiercely freed from shame and shuttled into truth-telling and Experience. There is the constellatory thinking where every thing is kin.”
As Clifton writes in her groundbreaking memoir Generations: “Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.” Dedicated to her father, Samuel Sales, Generations traces Lucille Clifton’s family history through the stories her father told about their ancestors. The 30th anniversary eBook edition of Good Woman will be the first time Generations will have been made available in a digital format.
The deluxe eBook edition of Good Woman extends the lines of the Clifton family with an expanded section of previously unpublished photographs from the Lucille S. Clifton Estate. These carefully selected photos include images of the poet’s childhood, a snapshot of a young Lucille Sayles with her soon-to-be husband Fred Clifton, a remarkable image of Lucille Clifton reading with June Jordan, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde at the 1973 Phyllis Wheatley Poetry Festival, and full-color photographs of Lucille Clifton with her daughters in 2009, along with other captivating photographs of Lucille Clifton and her family throughout her lifetime.
Lucille’s daughter Sidney Clifton says: “My siblings and I are thrilled by the upcoming release of the Good Woman ebook. Good Woman's poetry and the Generations memoir continue to resonate years after the book's initial release, and the ebook allows our mother's work to reach a worldwide audience in a truly meaningful way. The addition of new and rare family photographs and an exquisite foreword by poet Aracelis Girmay make this ebook a treasure for new and longtime fans. The Good Woman ebook is a work of art that we hope will be savored for years to come!”
The Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir deluxe 30th anniversary eBook edition will be available at eBook retailers on April 17, 2018. BOA Editions will be holding a promotional giveaway for customers who purchase the eBook. Prizes will include special broadsides of Lucille Clifton’s poetry, Clifton’s limited-edition chapbook from the fenceless field (BOA Editions, 2007), and print editions of the original Good Woman and other Clifton titles. Visit www.boaeditions.org/pages/Clifton-Giveaway for more information.
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