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Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) served as Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Chancellor of the �����Ƶ of American Poets, and Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland from 1974 to 1985. She was elected a Fellow of the American �����Ƶ in 1999. Her poetry collections include “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988–2000” (2000), which won a National Book Award; “Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980” (1987) and “Next: New Poems” (1987), both of which were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and “Two-Headed Woman” (1980), which was also a Pulitzer Prize nominee and the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. “cruelty. don't talk to me about cruelty” and “what spells raccoon to me,” from “Next: New Poems,” by Lucille Clifton, © 1987, are reprinted with the permission of boa Editions, Ltd.