Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

In honor of National Poetry Month, our selection for The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series  is   Good Woman:  Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980,   by Lucille Clifton .   A work that consists of her first four published collections and her 1976 memoir.  This combined manuscript was published in 1987 by BOA Editions. and is accessible through hoopladigital.com. Lucille Clifton was bo rn Thelma Lucille Sayles in 1936 and passed away in 2010. Clifton was an African- American poet, children’s book author, and educator from Buffalo ,   New York.   From 1979 to 1985 she was  Poet Laureate of Maryland and was nominated twice in the same year as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.   Although Lucille Clifton went on to publish six more manuscripts after   good woman , this particular book was chosen because it includes both her early poetry and her memoir.  The memoir,entitled   Generations   starts on the day of her father’s death and flashes back through