Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Purchase is for those who are grieving, who feel frightened by the world’s meanness, who are solitary. It is for those who, even in the midst of mourning, find themselves distracted from despair by the natural world. It is for everyone looking to find comfort and understanding. From a hidden river in upstate New York to a massive flood in Kentucky, currents of all strengths run through these poems, taking the reader through grief, estrangement, and the too-often unseen interiority of Black women, landing at a new perspective, the light of faith dawning.

Drawing upon intersections of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature, and lived experience, the poems in Open Interval locate the self in the interval between body and name.

Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize

Selected by Marilyn Nelson

Finalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize

“Imagine Leda black—” begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present.

In Van Clief-Stefanon’s powerful voice, last night’s angry words “puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits.” She remembers a child’s innocence “lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . .” Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.