won’t you celebrate with me, poem by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

SOURCE: “won’t you celebrate with me” appears in Lucille Clifton‘s collection Book of Light (Copper Canyon Press, 1993), available at Amazon.com.

PAINTING: “Dance” by Bayo Iribhogbe. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) won the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007 and was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987). Her collection Two-Headed Woman (1980) was also a Pulitzer nominee and won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts. She served as the state of Maryland’s poet laureate from 1974 until 1985, and won the National Book Award for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000). Clifton was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.