The eNotes Blog Poets in Black and White Remembering Lucille Clifton and RobertFrost

Poets in Black and White Remembering Lucille Clifton and RobertFrost Lucille Clifton and Robert Frost At this month, we are taking some time to remember two great American poets:   Lucille Clifton and Robert Frost.   Clifton passed away on February 17, 2010, and March 26 marked Frosts birthday. Seldom have two writers articulated their view of the United States in such unique and memorable ways. Lucille Cliftons often highly personal poems focused on what it was like to be an African-American woman living in the twentieth century. Her voice has been characterized as earthy and reminiscent of the rhythms of  the black oral tradition.   One of her poems that embodies all three of these characteristics is The Lost Baby: the time i dropped your almost body down down to meet the waters under the city and run one with the sewage to the sea what did i know about waters rushing back what did i know about drowning or being drowned you would have been born in winter in the year of the disconnected gas and no car we would have made the thin walk over the genecy  hill into the canada winds to let you slip into a strangers hands if you were here i could tell you these and some other things and if i am ever less than a mountain for your definite brothers and sisters let the rivers wash over my head let the sea take me for a spiller of seas let black men call me stranger always for your never named sake Cliftons collection of poems  Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.   Twelve years later, in 2000, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 won a National Book Award. Like Clifton, Robert Frost too also wrote of the American experience, but from the vantage point of a white New Englander. However, where Clifton is typically sparse and direct, Frosts poems are frequently long and colloquial.   And while he is often thought of as Americas kindly grandfather poet, in fact, Frost could be quite dark and brooding.   For example, consider his poem Acquainted With the Night: I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Robert Frost won the Pulitzer Prize four times: 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes 1931 for Collected Poems 1937 for A Further Range 1943 for A Witness Tree Frost died on January 29, 1963. He was 89 years old.