Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.
Lucille CliftonRead
don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Artists create to explore their curiosities rather than provide definite answers.
Lucille Clifton emphasizes that the true essence of art and poetry lies in the exploration of ideas and emotions rather than the delivery of conclusive answers. Artists engage with their sense of wonder and curiosity, using their creative works as a means to ask questions and delve deeper into the complexities of human experience.
Themes
ArtPoetryExplorationCuriosityQuestions
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about creative processes, this quote can emphasize the importance of exploration in artistic expression.
More from Lucille Clifton
All quotes →I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
Lucille CliftonRead
You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
Lucille CliftonRead
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.
Lucille CliftonRead
If i should enter the house and speak with my own voice, at last, about its awful furnitutre, pulling apart the covering over the dusty bodies; the randy father, the husband holding ice in his hand like a blessing, the mother bleeding into herself and the small imploding girl, i say if i should walk into that web, who will come flying after me, leaping tall buildings? you?
Lucille CliftonRead
blessing the boats (at saint 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
Lucille CliftonRead
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Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow.
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