"In Wild Blessings, Hilary Holladay offers the first full-length study of Lucille Clifton's poetry, drawing on a broad knowledge of the American poetic tradition and African American poetry in particular. Holladay places Clifton's poems in multiple contexts - personal, political, and literary - as she explicates major themes and analyzes specific works: Clifton's poems about womanhood, a central concern throughout her career; her fertility poems, which are compared with Sylvia Plath's poems on the same subject; her relation to the Black Arts Movement and to other black female poets, such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez; her biblical poems; her elegies; and her poignant family history, Generations, an extended prose poem. This book concludes with a wide-ranging interview with Clifton, in which she discusses her poetry and private life."--BOOK JACKET.