2026 keeps bringing back the dead: there are new books of poems from Larry Levis, Fanny Howe, Franz Wright, and of course Lucille Clifton’s At the Gate : Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 (BOA Editions), edited by Kazim Ali and born from new access to digital archives. This spring release coincides with the ongoing development of the Clifton House in Baltimore, where Executive Director Joël Diaz and Clifton’s daughter Sidney Clifton warmly welcomed some of us attending AWP Baltimore last month. To have Clifton re-enter the room, and to have the opportunity to enter the rooms where she wrote so many of her poems, is a gift in these times.

So “another bird has cracked herself / against our window, a kamikaze jay/or cardinal committed to sacrifice,” one Clifton poem begins, soon turning to “she was a woman, I know it.” May poetry continues to bring us down to Earth with titles like Callie Garnett’s Shit Hike (Song Cave) and Arden Levine’s Spoke (The Word Works) and collections from such cult favorites as Laura…