At the end of each year, the New York Times Magazine does a tribute to important cultural figures that passed away. The feature is called "The Lives They Lived." This year they included a beautiful tribute to Lucille Clifton, including rare insights from one of her daughters: “I’ve got some fox poems going around in my head,” Alexia remembered her mother saying, much as she had long ago, with her six young children playing around her, when she was inspired by something seen or contemplated and sat down at the typewriter at the dining table — or took the pen she always kept in her short Afro to jot a phrase. In the series of poems that now emerged, the fox in her yard, evening after evening, became a kind of sister, a knowing witness to Clifton’s nights alone: “only the solitary fox/watching my window light/barks her compassion. . . ./i move away from her eyes./from the pitying brush/of her tail . . ./i will keep the door unlocked/until something human comes.” Read the entire piece here: [NY Times Magazine Tribute to Lucille Clifton] [caption id="attachment_826" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Lucille Clifton. BOA poet."][/caption]