Quilting - Foxes in the Poetry of Lucille CliftonIn 1942, Virginia Woolf read an article to the Women's Service League on "The Angel in the House." For Woolf, this “angel” represented the voice in the back of a woman’s mind that said, “Never let anyone guess that you have a mind of your own” (1346). In Woolf's time, a woman was not supposed to write critically. Rather, a woman was expected “to be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive ; to use all the arts and wiles of her sex.” Woolf writes about the need to “kill” this angel. She says: “If I had not killed her, she would have killed me” (1346). Fortunately, today it is no longer considered inappropriate for a woman to write critically and honestly, but Lucille Clifton has her own "angel to kill" in some of her poetry. Clifton is a woman artist who uses her past experiences and those of her ancestors to write her poetry. Clifton uses the ideas of light and foxes to express the joy she finds in being a woman poet, as well as the fear an artist sometimes feels when first struck by an idea for a poem. The poems "Telling Our Stories" and "The Coming of Fox" reveal the feelings of fear an artist may experience when creating a work. In "Telling Our Stories", Clifton compares a fox to a poet: the fox came to my door every evening without asking. My fear trapped me inside, hoping to send her away, but she sat until morning, waiting for each of us to come. stood up from his hips, looked through the window then walked away, his muzzle trembling, his eyes ignorant? Child, I tell you now, it was not the animal blood I was hiding from, it was the blood. poet in it, the poet and the terrib...... middle of paper ..... .ht some "terrible stories" By highlighting these "terrible stories", a poet actually kills the "angels". » that kept her from writing. Every author has her own "angel" to kill. Lucille Clifton sees beyond her fear of what she might write about using her gift of poetry to. “kill your angel”. Works Cited Clifton, Lucille. Good Woman: Poems and Memoirs: 1969-1980. Rochester, New York: BOA, 1987.---. Quilting: Poems 1987-1990. Rochester, New York: BOA, 1991.---. The terrible stories. Brockport, New York: BOA, 1996. Rushing, Andrea Benton. “Lucille Clifton: a changing voice for changing times.” Contemporary literary criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc, 1991. 79-81. Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for women”. The Norton Anthology of Women's Literature. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and S. Gubar. New York, New York: Norton, 1996. 1345-48.