Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize Selected by Marilyn Nelson Finalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize "Imagine Leda black—" begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present. In Van Clief-Stefanon’s powerful voice, last night’s angry words "puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits." She remembers a child’s innocence "lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . ." Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.

Black Swan

Mark Twain

When Huckleberry Finn flees from his brutal father, he meets up with an old friend, the slave Jim, who is also running away. Together, they travel by raft down the Mississippi, tumbling in and out of amazing adventures -- from a floating house to a funeral, a shipwreck to a circus -- and experience some of the strange ways of people in the Deep South.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

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