Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000

Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 gathers more than a decade of work by the American poet Lucille Clifton. It combines a group of new poems written over the four years before its publication with generous selections from three of her earlier collections, Next, Quilting and The Terrible Stories. Clifton's poems are short and direct, built from plain words, strong images and sharp rhythms, and they take on the full range of human experience. She writes with passion and clarity about difficult subjects, facing pain and injustice directly while holding on to wisdom and hope. Many poems are only a few lines long, yet they carry great emotional weight. The book serves as an introduction to Clifton for new readers and a concentrated record of her later work for those who already know her. It won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry.