Poet Lucille Clifton dies

Lucille Clifton, 73, a National Book Award-winning poet and Pulitzer finalist, died yesterday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, her sister said. The cause of death was unclear but Clifton was hospitalized for an infection last week at a hospital in Columbia, Md., before being transferred to Baltimore.

A poet laureate of the state of Maryland, she worked for state and federal governments even after her first book of poems, "Good Times," was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times in 1969., her biography says. She reads a poem about the days surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 at the PBS NewsHour site and talked about when and how she started to write in this video report from WGBH television.

The native of Depew, N.Y., won the National Book Award in 2000 for "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000." She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1988.