Summary: The late poet Lucille Clifton was widely acclaimed for her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, and spirituality. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement posthumously, from the Poetry Society of America. An anthology of her work; “The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 recently won the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and Clifton was also honored by the Furious Flower Poetry Center (James Madison University.) Also: A talk with Hilary Holladay who is the author of “Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton,” the first full-length study of Clifton’s work. Later in the show: From Homer to Chaucer to Rita Dove, poetry has plumbed and expressed human strife, love, and everyday realities. Bob Hicok (Virginia Tech) worked for twenty years in the automotive industry. His poems explore the lives of family and friends coping with economic devastation in Michigan. Also: Kevin Shortsleeve (Christopher Newport University) is working on an anthology documenting nonsense literature from all over the world. And: In her poem, “Empty Nest,” Lisa Russ Spaar (University of Virginia) explores how a familiar place changes through time. Spaar is a Guggenheim Fellowship awardee and an essayist on the subject of how poets’ personal odysseys intersect with a desire to understand humanity.
