Days of Smoke: Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was a beloved poet, writer, and educator. She won the National Book Award for Poetry, among many other honors.
“the earth is a living thing” from The Book of Light, copyright © 1992 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press: www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Image: Kenneth Paik for the Environmental Protection Agency, “The Water Level of the Kansas River Has Receded to a Trickle, Exposing the Riverbed. The Cracked Soil is Soaked with Oil,” 1973. Licensed under public domain.
Days of Smoke: Poets on the Climate Crisis is made possible in part through a partnership with Battery Park City Authority and in collaboration with the Poetry Coalition’s 2023 program theme, “And so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson”: Poetry and Grief. Special thanks to curator Ryan Mita; Abby Ehrlich and JP Diaz at the Battery Park City Authority; Fred Courtright at The Permissions Company and Robert Shatzkin at W.W. Norton.