Lucille Clifton believed in the liberating possibilities of learning – and she treasured the schools and teachers who invited and nurtured it.
Her personal commitment to her students was unwavering and they in turn were deeply grateful for her incisive mind, her attentiveness, her humor, openness and generosity.
Here are a just few ways that spirit shines through:
Lucille Clifton wrote “May This be a House of Joy” as the inaugural school blessing for Hollywood Elementary School in Maryland , November 10, 1993. Kathleen Glaser was the principal of the school at the time.
May This be a House of Joy
May this be a House of Joy.
May we be open here to dreams, and to each other.
May all who enter in these magic walls feel love and feel respect
for learning and each other. May we be always friends to life. May we walk in that friendship.
May learning live in this house. May it never leave.
— Lucille Clifton
From two of her students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland:
“Lucille taught me to love the feeling of the wind at my back during times of change, even when it felt more like a tsunami than a tender evening breeze. Because of Lucille I didn’t take my writing too lightly – nor too seriously – but just seriously enough. (Poets have an unfortunate tendency to ballast their public personas with more weight and gravitas than their ethos earns). Because of Lucille I stopped writing just for me, and started writing for others.
Because of Lucille I stopped hiding from myself and began to write with gut-wrenching honesty. The way she taught me to write, about my life and desires, informed the way that I speak now – to audiences, to friends, to family, to lovers and loved ones.” – Jen McCabe
“She once said, maybe in not so many words, that the individual is more important than the poet, who only seeks to display himself or herself first as a poet, ignoring the value of their humanity. From that I took to understand just how much we depend on each other, more than we care to admit at times. Outside of her work Lucille was able to invoke the nurturing feelings so familiar of a daughter, mother or grandmother, the people who we look to comfort us and cast their blanker of warmth and love over us.” – Henry Arango
And finally, the following are remarks by Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan, President of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, made at a recent event honoring Lucille Clifton.
“Lucille Clifton’s life and teaching were marked by a genuine curiosity about everything. That curiosity was surely a part of why she was a two time Jeopardy! champion, but more importantly it explains much of why she was so committed to St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Indeed, the idea of being “a life-long learner” is ingrained in the liberal arts tradition and it was also part of Ms. Clifton’s dedication to the thoughtful examination of the ambiguities and complexities of our lived lives.
Lucille Clifton was one of the most distinguished, decorated and beloved poets of her time. Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, she also received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for the television special “Free to be You and Me.” Among other major recognitions, she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, served as a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year.
Ms. Clifton held that, “One thing poetry can do is speak for those who cannot yet speak for themselves. Poets can give voice to the voiceless,” she said, “poetry can help others know they are not alone.” She saw the act of sharing our stories as a powerful and transformational way of helping reshape our communities into more understanding and compassionate places.
Lucille Clifton’s integrity and moral voice about matters in our individual and communal lives served St. Mary’s as a beacon of courage and right action. Her poems, forged from experience, emotion and a fierce, truth-telling intellect, focus on the human struggle for dignity, justice and freedom. As the citation from the National Book Awards so accurately asserts, her poems, “fueled by emotional necessity. . . [achieve] such clarity and power that her vision becomes representative, communal, and unforgettable.”
Ms. Clifton shared our sense of urgency that we at St. Mary’s must enlarge our perspective in order to gain greater understanding of the human struggle for dignity, justice and freedom – for people of color, for women, for all who are oppressed, marginalized, or otherwise shunted aside.
As we stand on the cusp of Black History month and Woman’s History month, we might think of this juncture as a bridge –one of many that enables us to value our differences and understand the deep sources of our commonalities – a bridge that helps us cross over from being this – to becoming that.”
– Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan
President, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
March 3, 2016
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