Sharon olds

1. Her first collection, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry
Center Award. The poems explore intensely personal themes with unflinching
physicality, enacting what Alicia Ostriker describes as an "erotics of family love and
pain."(28).
2. Olds’ second volume, The Dead and the Living, won the 1983 Lamont Poetry Prize and
the National Book Critics Circle Award.
3. Following The Dead and the Living, Olds published The Gold Cell, (1987)
4. The Father, (1992),
5. The Wellspring, (1996),
6. Blood, Tin, Straw, (1999), and The Unswept Room, (2002).
7. The Father, a series of poems about a daughter’s loss of her father to cancer, was
shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a finalist for The National Book Critics’ Circle
Award. In the words of Michael Ondaatje, her poems are "pure fire in the hands." Olds’
work is anthologized in over 100 collections, ranging from literary/poetry textbooks to
special collections. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages for
international publications. She was the New York State Poet Laureate for 1998-2000.
Wellspring: Poems The subjects covered in Olds's (The Father) new collection will be
familiar to readers, as will be her uncompromising insights and the beauty of her verse.
The poems of Part I address the poet's childhood and her uneasy relationship with her
parents, subjects about which she continues to display the bittersweet lyricism at
which she excels: ``...sometimes I thought she could/ sense bits of herself in my
body/ like dots of undissolved sugar/ in a recipe that did not quite work out.'' Part II,
concerned primarily with adolescence and awakening sexuality, offers perhaps the
strongest grouping as Olds explores sexuality in an ``endless... apprenticeship to the
mortal.'' Least effective are the poems that follow, mainly about her children and her
motherhood, where even Olds's powers of microscopic observation-of both self and
other-do not always lift this material out of the mundane. The last poems celebrate
love in marriage, portraying the maturing of erotic and emotional bonds over time
(``love is simply our element,/ it is the summer night, we are in it.'') While one might
wish to see Olds taking more chances and expanding her subject matter, she does not
fail to awaken us to the depth and beauty of familiar concerns. (Jan.)

Lucille Clifton
Originally Thelma Lucille Sayles later Lucille Clifton was born June 27, 1936, in Depew,
New York although she moved to Buffalo, New York with her family early on in her life.
Clifton showed her intelligence even at an early age and graduated high school at only
sixteen. She then went on to win a scholarship to Howard University in Washington D.C.
although she transferred to Fredonia State Teachers College. During Clifton's college
experience she met some of the people that influenced her life, and writing the most. At
Howard Clifton was exposed to the dramatist and poet Amiri Bakara, also know as LeRoi
Jones and another poet, Sterling Brown. Its when Clifton was attending Fredonia State
Teachers College that she was experimenting and exploring poetry, drama, and other
various things that went on to shape her writing. Also at Fredonia Clifton met her future
husband Fred Clifton who at the time held a position as a philosophy professor at the
University of Buffalo. Clifton had six children to Fred. The couple was happily married until
1984 when Fred passed away. While Clifton was attending Fredonia she had her big break
when Robert Hayden another (better known at the time) African American artist found
her works worthy of the YW-YMCA Poetry Center Discovery Award. Not only was this an
 honor but it lead to Clifton’s publication of her first poetry collection, Good Times (1969).
Luckily Clifton's début into the literary scene was a major success. Good Times was
claimed to be one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. After this major
breakthrough Clifton went on to use the teaching skills she had learned at Fredonia and
held positions at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1974 to 1979,
professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from
1985 to 1989, Distinguished Professor of Literature and Distinguished Professor of
Humanities at St. Mary's College, Maryland, from 1989 to 1991, and professor of creative
writing at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, beginning in 1998, Not to mention
she served as the Poet Laureate of the state of Maryland from 1979 to 1985. Clifton is
one of the most accomplished women in the literary world. Owner of Pulitzer Prize
nominations for poetry in 1980, 1987, and 1991, the Lannan Literary Award for poetry in
1997, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1997, the Los Angeles Times Poetry Award in
1997, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award in 1999, and the National Book Award for
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000) also a National Book
Award nomination for The Terrible Stories (1996). NO only that but she has been awarded
honorary degrees from Colby College, the University of Maryland, Towson State
University, Washington College, and Albright College. Lucille Clifton’s work shows true
passion for the things of everyday and she was rightfully recognized for her talents.

Good times
Lucille Clifton writes very expressive poetry, generally autobiographical, and always full
of "accessible" imagery. By that I mean she uses everyday elements to draw for us a
picture of her intent. In "Good Times," the speaker (presumably Clifton herself) is
reflecting on the moments which gave her the most positive feelings about her growing-
up years. Let's not be fooled, though. In the middle of the "good times" are implied some
very difficult times, as well.
Speaker:
The speaker of this poem is the author, Lucille Clifton. Though the poem speaks of her
childhood days, she is telling it from an older perspective, like a reflection. She tells the
story of her family having "good times" as if she is in the present. By the last two lines
though, it becomes evident that she is telling it looking back on those days. She says, "oh
children think about the good times." She ends the poem in such a manner to remind the
reader to focus on the good in life, and not the bad. Good times can make the bad times
seem more bearable. Before the last two lines, the purpose of her poem is unclear, but
by reading those last two lines, it is evident that the poem is intended to teach, or advise.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism who strives to bring together,
rather than separate, the multiplicities in the different threads of her cultural identity.
Born in 1944 in Malacca, Malaysia, a small town on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula,
she endured a childhood powerfully shaped by deprivation, poverty, parental violence and
abandonment. Abandoned by her mother, and growing up with five brothers in a culture
that rarely recognized girls as individuals, she tried desperately to fit in. Lim described
herself during this period as “a wild girl who ran with the boys and alone through the
streets”
This experience only seemed to toughen Lim. She possessed a “stubborn spirit” that she
utilized in school, making her a leader as well as an outcast. In an interview with Sook C.
Kong of the Asian Lesbian Bisexual Alliance, Lim says, “Growing up when I did, there weren’t
many other recreational alternatives, and I had a pretty unhappy childhood. Reading was a
huge solace, retreat, escape. I was a really obsessive reader. Somewhere along the line, I
had a sense I should write about things I knew rather than read about things I didn’t know. I
wanted to write my own voice, my own community.” Finding her own voice meant coming to
an understanding of her native Chinese-Malaysian familial culture vis-a-vis the conflicting
values her Westernized parents modeled. She was scorned by teachers for her love of English
over her “native” tongue and was looked down upon for wishing to pursue her love of English
literature. Her early education was at a Catholic convent school under the British colonial
education system. Lim then won a federal scholarship to the University of Malaya which she
attended from 1964 to 1969, earning a BA with First Class Honors in English. In 1969, at the
age of twenty-four, motivated by two prestigious fellowships, she entered graduate school at
Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, earning her Ph.D. in English and American
Literature in 1973. Poetry is Lim’s driving passion. In terms of poetry, she says “That was my
first form of literary expression and is the most primal for me.” Her first poem was written
and then published in the Malacca Times when she was ten. By the time she was eleven, she
knew she wanted to be a poet. Her first book of poetry, Crossing the Peninsula and Other
Poems, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1980, just after the birth of Lim’s first (and
only) child, Gershom. Lim was the first woman and the first Asian to recieve the award. With
a provocative and intimate tone, Lim uses her poetry to reach into the past to make sense of
the present. Thematically, questions of identity and transition, gender, race, and the
complexities of relationships permeate Lim’s poetry. Dreams and her childhood experiences
often provide inspiration and source material.Although Lim identifies herself as a poet, she is
a cross-genre writer who has also published numerous scholarly essays, short stories, and
her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces: An AsianAmerican Memoir of Homelands (Feminist
Press, 1996). In 1990, along with co-editors Mayumi Tsutakawa and Margarita Donnelly, she
won the American Book Award for The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women’s
Anthology. In 1982 she won an Asiaweek Short Story award for “Mr. Tang’s Uncles” (Feminist
Press, 1997). Lim’s writing has received considerable attention both in the United States and
in Asia since the 1996 publication of her memoir. Readily apparent in Lim’s prose writing are
her roots as a poet. There is extreme attention to detail, making the memoir read much like
a novel. She describes scenes from her past with vivid imagery. On page 10, for example,
she describes “Cold water from a giant tap running down an open drain that is greenish slime
under my naked feet.” Biography continued 3 Shirley Geok-lin Lim © 2009 Regents of the
University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. The University of Minnesota is an equal
opportunity educator and employer. Lim says that one of the “major thematics” to emerge
from the memoir is the story of emigration from Asia to the U.S. As an Asian, she came to
see the reality of the U.S. that had been glamorized before she came. In Malaysia she was an
outsider for being an “Anglophile freak;” in the U.S. she was lonely in a society where she
was treated with awkward stiffness and tentativeness. “There are many ways,” she laments,
“in which America tells you you don't belong” (Among the White Moon Faces, 199). A simple,
yet important element in Lim's writing is her profound honesty. She fearlessly recognizes the
struggles she has endured, admitting her choices were not always easy or correct. Her work
posesses a rare openness that makes her an accessible voice and courageous role model to
all female readers, not just those of a similar heritage. “Across the divisions of race and class
(between women), a rare yet common ground is visible. We understand each other in devious
ways: our physical desires and the shame we have been trained to feel over our bodies, our
masked ambitions, the distances between our communities and our hungry selves, our need
to be needed. (I find) a sensibility of support that grows when social gender is recognized as
a shared experience” (Among the White Moon Faces, 157). Currently working on a novel and
new collection of poems, Lim continues to explore origin and identity. Her current research
includes a book-length study of gender and nation identities in Asian American discourses.

Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in 1954 in San Francisco and moved to San Jose (the setting
for several of her best-known poems) after her parents’ divorce in 1959. Her ethnic
identification is not only Mexican American but also Native American, and she draws on this
dual heritage in her poetry. She began writing poetry at an early age and first came to notice
reading “Refugee Ship” at a drama festival in Mexico City in 1974. Her poems began to appear
in Chicano journals such as Revista Chicano-Riquena and Latin American Literary Review, and
in 1981, the University of Pittsburgh Press published her first volume of poetry, Emplumada,
to widespread praise. Cervantes gained her B.A. from San Jose State University in 1984,
studied for four years as a graduate student in the history of consciousness program at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, and has taught creative writing at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. In addition to her academic position, Cervantes has done a good deal of
editorial work, encouraging other Chicano writers, and has read her poetry at numerous
national and international literary festivals. Although Lorna Dee Cervantes (sur-VAHN-teez)
grew up in an urban, working-class barrio, she was raised to speak English because of her
family’s fear of racism. As a result, gender issues and ethnicity and language issues play
major roles in her poetry. In keeping with such themes, Cervantes describes herself as a
Chicana poet, with all the ethnic, gender, and language markers expressed or implied.
Furthermore, she means that description to be subversive. If societies label subgroups and
individuals, when a group or individual self-defines, it is an exercise of power, defying the
society, which leads to self-determination, an act historically denied to women and members
of minority ethnic groups. Cervantes notes that women and Chicanos’ common experiences
and challenges are in the first case due to machismo and patriarchy, and in the second due
to racial prejudice and economic exploitation. This unites either group but alienates it from
other groups. While the visionary power of poetry can invoke an idealized, utopian world, the
real world is beset by social problems, making social revolution necessary. Poetry serves
Cervantes as a form of resistance, another means of subversion. She employs narrative
poems to represent the real world of conflicts and lyrical poetry for contemplation and
meditation. The former deal most specifically with ethnicity and gender, particularly male-
female sexual relationships. The lyrical poems frequently bemoan the necessity of social
commitment and responsibility.

Language serves Cervantes as a power strategy. For example, she juxtaposes versions of her
poems in English and Spanish. She does not translate poems, as one poem is not the same
as the other: Each develops independently in its own...

Doty's first collection of poems, Turtle, Swan, was published by David R. Godine in 1987; a
second collection, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, appeared from the same publisher in
1991. Booklist described his verse as "quiet, intimate" and praised its original style in turning
powerful young urban experience into "an example of how we live, how we suffer and
transcend suffering".[4]
Doty's "Tiara" was printed in 1990 in an anthology called Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets
Respond to AIDS. This poem critiques the way society perceived and treated homosexual
AIDS sufferers. The 1980s marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.
The Reagan administration's delayed action to fight AIDS resulted in thousands of deaths,
especially among young gay men.[5] Some believe the initial reluctance to mobilize was due
to homophobia—society was, at the time, uncomfortable with gay sexuality. This poem
criticizes the idea that gay men "invite[d] their own oppression as a consequence of
pleasure."[6] The poem's phrase "he asked for it" represents this common, unsympathetic
opinion about gay men with AIDS. Imagery like "perfect stasis" and "body's paradise" is used
by Doty to paint a future beyond brutality and discrimination for AIDS sufferers. According to
Landau, Doty's poems were "humane and comforting narratives" that offered hope to people
living with HIV and stood in contrast to the hostile climate of the United States.[6]
His third book of poetry, My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press, 1993), reflects the grief,
perceptions and new awareness gained in the face of great and painful loss. In 1989, Doty's
partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV.[7] The collection, written while Roberts had not
yet become ill, contemplates the prospect of mortality, desperately attempting to find some
way of making the prospect of loss even momentarily bearable. My Alexandria was chosen
for the National Poetry Series by Philip Levine, and won the National Book Critics Circle
Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. When the book was published in the U.K. by
Jonathan Cape, Doty became the first American poet to win the T.S. Eliot Prize, Britain's most
significant annual award for poetry.[8]
Doty had begun the poems collected in Atlantis (HarperCollins, 1995) when Roberts died in
1994. The book won the Bingham Poetry Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Heaven's
Coast: A Memoir (HarperCollins, 1996), is a meditative account of losing a loved one, and a
study in grief. The book received the PEN Martha Albrand Award First Nonfiction. [9]
Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Deep Lane (W.W. Norton, 2015), a
book of descents: into the earth beneath the garden, into the dark substrata of a life. [10] He
has also written essays on still life painting, objects and intimacy, and a handbook for writers.
His volumes of poetry include Sweet Machine (HarperCollins, 1998), Source, (HarperCollins,
2002), School of the Arts (HarperCollins, 2005) and Fire to Fire: New and Selected
Poems (HarperCollins, 2008), which received the National Book Award.[11]
Doty's three memoirs include Heaven's Coast, described as "searing" by The New York Times,
is the excruciating journaling of his thoughts subsequent to hearing his lover's diagnosis with
AIDS, a work "layered" with awarenesses like Dante's trip through hell [12] (HarperCollins,
1996), and Firebird: A Memoir, an autobiography from six to sixteen, which tells the story of
his childhood in the American South and in Arizona (HarperCollins, 1999). [13] These first two
memoirs received the American Library Associations Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award. His
most recent memoir, Dog Years (HarperCollins, 2005), was a New York Times Bestseller and
received the Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the American Library Association in
2008.[14]
Doty's essays include Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (Beacon Press, 2001), a book-length
essay about 17th-century Dutch painting and our relationships to objects, and The Art of
Description (Graywolf Books, 2010), a collection of four essays in which, "Doty considers the
task of saying what you see, and the challenges of rendering experience through
language." [15]
He served as guest editor for "The Best American Poetry 2012 (Scribners, 2012).[16]
Doty has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College,
Columbia University, Cornell and NYU. He was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the
graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years, and
is currently Distinguished Professor and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he directs Writers House. He has
also participated in The Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, and was on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers'
Conference in August 2006. He is the inaugural judge of the White Crane/James White Poetry
Prize for Excellence in Gay Men's Poetry.[17]
Doty was a judge for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize.[18] In 2014, he was welcomed as a trustee
of the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry.[19]
In 2011, Doty was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
From 1995 until 2010, his partner was the writer Paul Lisicky. They were married in 2008 and
divorced in 2013. He currently lives with his partner Alexander Hadel in New York City and in
the hamlet of The Springs in East Hampton, New York. The couple married October 2015 in
Muir Woods National Monument.