I've been asked to remind you that smoking is not
allowed in this auditorium.
The next visiting poet be Stephen Dunn
who will read in this auditorium Wednesday,
November 5th at 8:30.
We want to invite you to a reception
for Lucille Clifton immediately following
the reading tonight in the Terrace Lounge of the Student
Union building.
It's customary I realize and it's
become I guess a tradition for the director of the Poetry
Center to introduce the visiting writers.
I've asked that an exception be made to that tonight
because I wanted to introduce Lucille Clifton for very
selfish reasons.
Lucille Clifton comes to us from Baltimore
where she lives with her husband and six children.
One of her main concerns this evening
is that when she gets home tomorrow mid-morning,
there won't be too much ironing piled up for her to do.
She is the author of three books of poetry, Good Times, Good
News About The Earth, and her most recent book published
last year An Ordinary Woman.
She's also winner of the YWYMHA's discovery
series in New York.
She won that with the manuscript which
was submitted without her knowledge by somebody else.
She is currently poet in residence
at Coppin State College.
Lucille Clifton's work is always positive, always strong,
and always very much her own.
Other than her dazzling talent, I
think I admire her most for the fact
that she has great integrity as an artist.
She in spite of the pressures of which I am sure
have been put upon her, she has never
allowed her voice to be used in ways
she didn't want it to be used.
She's always been her own woman.
She has refused to be a mouthpiece for any group
because she understands that by writing
about the specifics of her life, she can be universal,
and she has been that.
She's been compared to Whitman in this,
and I think very aptly.
It's a privilege for me to present
a great poet and the most extraordinary woman in spite
of the title of her last book, and also
one of the most beautiful women I've ever
had the pleasure to know.
Lucille Clifton.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.