On February 13th, the St. Mary’s family lost one of its members as Poet Lucille Clifton, former St. Mary’s College of Maryland professor of humanities and Maryland poet laureate, died unexpectedly. Among many awards over her life, the poet, who was 73, received the National Book Award in poetry in 2000 for her collection of poems, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (BOA Editions). She received an Emmy and was the only poet to have won two Pulitzer nominations in a single year.
Clifton also had a great impact on generations of students at St. Mary’s College, including Colombian-born Henry Arango ’10, who came to the U.S. at age eight and has written poetry ever since. “As someone who has experienced marginalization, I was drawn to Lucille’s work, which embraced and encouraged me to continue to give voice to my experience,” he said. Arango met Clifton three years ago during a poetry workshop that she led. He attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., and now serves as the president of Raices Hispanas and is an English and African and African Diaspora studies major at SMCM.
“Outside of her work,” Arango added, “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 blanket of warmth and love over us. Lucille Clifton was not just a poem written on the wall at St. Mary’s College, she was a celebration of life and all the wonderful things that make us human.”
Henry is is referring to one of Lucille’s poems, “blessing the boats (at st. mary’s), which is painted on the wall of the stairway in the campus center. Every student walks by it each day on their way to eat at the Great Room.
blessing the boats (at st. mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Clifton’s poetry also surrounds St. John’s pond. She wrote a collection of poems in the days that followed September 11th, 2001, and the student body pushed to have permanently installed into the campus grounds. She talks about that collection of poetry in the following interview with NPR.
