Poetry

The Terrible Stories

National Book Award for Poetry Finalist Lucille Clifton is one of the most distinguished American poets writing today. In The Terrible Stories, her tenth collection of verse, Clifton covers new terrain--cancer and mastectomy, the life of King David, encounters with a vixen fox who is both shaman and muse. Brilliantly honed language, stunning images and sharp rhythms address the whole of human experience: birth, death, children, family, sexuality and spirituality, and community in antebellum and contemporary American culture. Hers is a poetry passionate and wise, ranging from the personal to the biblical to the mythical, not afraid to rage or whisper.

bathsheba

how it was it was
as if all of the blood in my body
gorged
into my loin
so that even my fingers grew stiff
but cold and the heat of my rod
was my only burning
desire
desire my only fire
and whether i loved her
i could not say but
i wanted her whatever she was
whether a curse
of the wife of uriah

© BOA Editions, Ltd 1996

Available editions:
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Paperback ISBN: 1-880238-37-3
Price: $12.50
Publishing Date: January 1996

FormatPaperback

Publication DateJanuary 1, 1996

ISBN1-880238-37-3

$12.50

About the Author

Lucille Clifton (1936 - 2010) was an award winning poet, fiction writer, and author of children’s books. Her poetry collection, Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA, 2000), won the National Book Award for Poetry. In 1988 she became the only author to have two collections selected in the same year as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir (BOA, 1987), and Next: New Poems (BOA, 1987). In 1996, her collection The Terrible Stories (BOA, 1996), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Among her many other awards and accolades are the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Frost Medal, and an Emmy Award. In 2013, her posthumously published collection The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 (BOA, 2012), was awarded the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry.