"Poets across America called and e-mailed one another this past weekend, to take in the terrible news that Lucille Clifton died Saturday morning, at the age of seventy-three. Though Clifton surely possessed a cat’s nine lives—she had a transplanted kidney and had fought many bouts with cancer, in various parts of her body—we were still shocked that she had left us, for I do not think there is an American poet as beloved as Clifton, or one whose influence radiated as widely. "