SOURCE: A review of The Book of Light, in The New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1993, pp. 15-16.

Here, poet and critic David Kirby applauds the humanity of Clifton's poetry in The Book of Light.

Ms. Clifton finds beauty in actual people and places. In "thel" (uncapitalized, like the other poems in this collection), she speaks of someone who "was my first landscape," a "sweet attic of a woman. / 'repository of old songs." The speakers in Ms. Clifton's poems are usually heading home. In "the yeti poet returns to his village to tell his story," the speaker retreats from "the shrunken world / of hairless men" and makes his way back "to this wilderness / where we know where we are / what we are." Thus the yeti poet defines himself only in the embraces of his hirsute peers.

And in "the women you are accustomed to," Ms. Clifton pointedly rejects...