Reviews for The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

The average rating for The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-13 00:00:00 Albert Baur 'I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with liars.' Audre Lorde is the Patron Saint of activism. Often best known for her speeches and essays in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, she was also a phenomenal poet and I would like very much for everyone to read her. 'Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought,' wrote Lorde. 'As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring ideas'. Lorde (1934-1982) is a monumental figure in both Black and Feminist writing and activism. The self-proclaimed 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet' spent her life confronting injustices and is still a cornerstone of intersectional theory, speaking out against racism, homophobia, sexism, classism and more. Of any book of poetry I own, this might be the one I have most dogeared and underlined as she is so immensely quotable. Lines of her poetry often tumble about in my head and are empowering anthems that can get anyone through even the toughest days. In a speech given at Harvard in 1982, Lorde said 'if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.' Her poetry champions this spirit through a fierce and valiant voice that is as inimitable as it is inspiring as she confronts a wide range of topics like a protest flooding the streets with demands for a better world. We made strong poems for each other exchanging formulas for our own particular magic -from Neighbors Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde in 1934, as a child she dropped the 'y' in her name because she liked the symmetry of the e-endings in Audre Lorde, an early sign of an ear and eye for language that would blossom into a lifelong pursuit of truth and justice through the written word. She tells this story in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and says that at a young age she found herself always "thinking in poetry" and began penning poems as early as 12, using poetry to connect with and defend classmates considered outcasts as she was herself for being an openly gay Black girl. Her first poetry publication, a poem written in while attending Hunter College High School in Manhattan--a school for intellectually gifted kids--was originally rejected by her school's newspaper for purported obscenity so she instead found a home for it in Seventeen magazine. mother I need your blackness now as the august earth needs rain. I am the sun and moon and forever hungry the sharpened edge where day and night shall meet and not be one. -from The House of Yemanjá After college she began working as a librarian in New York then as a writer-in-residence Tougaloo College in Mississippi where she lead workshops of young Black students who were eager to discuss Civil Rights issues. She lead a life of activism, founded a small press exclusively for WoC during a time when the industry was dominated by patriarchal white presses (as it still is more or less today) calledKitchen Table as well as working with other organizations promoting women in publishing; was a founder of Women's Coalition of St. Croix which helped rape and domestic abuse survivors, helped create Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa which aided women affected by apartheid; was invited to a delegation of Black women writers in Cuba in 1985 that discussed how the Cuban revolution impacted racism and particularly focused on the state of LGBTQ+ people in Cuba; and took part in a visiting professorship in Berlin where she coined the term "Afro-Germanism" and gave rise to a Black women's movement in Germany. All the while penning insightful essays and poetry. Her's was a life well lived and a legacy well founded. Even today there exists the Audre Lorde Project, an art center for LGBTQ+ artists in NYC for which I am a sustaining donor. Love is a word another kind of open' As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside Take my word for jewel in your open light. -from Coal Her poetry is outstanding. She was recognized early on and published in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, U. S. A anthology along with my personal favorite poet Lucille Clifton and nominated for a National Book Award in 1972. With a major publisher finally behind her, her 1976 release of Coal--compiling her earlier works of poetry with fresh work--launched her to the forefront of a Black feminist movement. Her poetry tackles a wide range of subjects but centers around the Black experience, lesbianism, disability and Black feminism. Her poetry is expressly written for those who find themselves "outsiders" to social norms, and is a rallying cry to challenge the obdurate cultures that oppress otherness. 'I am defined as other in every group I'm part of,' Lorde says, 'the outsider, both strength and weakness. Yet without community there is certainly no liberation, no future, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between me and my oppression'. Intersectionality is a cornerstone of her work, with many facets of identity comingeling gracefully to inform upon each both individually and as shared concepts. She wrote that she holds a 'concert of voices within herself and gives each a voice in a stirring orchestra of words. I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic and the noon's new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white. -from A Woman Speaks Her poetry is complementary to her essays and work to probe similar territory in alternate ways. Much of the theory from Sister Outsider is found expressed in her poetry in a beautiful way that lets it further seep into your heart. Lorde urges readers to speak out against injustice, and reminds us that silence is complicity. '[B]ut when we are silent / we are still afraid,' she writes in A Litany for Survival, 'so it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive.' This is a powerful statement that reminds all readers that the forces working to crush you will do it regardless, so it is better to face them decrying their destruction rather than be smote in complicity to them. As a gay, Black woman, she has confronted her share of injustice and prejudice, and Lorde speaks of harnessing your rage and using it for social productivity. Survival won't come for many without demanding it, and systemic injustice cannot be destroyed from within, as she writes in some of her most quoted passages from her essays: those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. In her works, particularly from The Black Unicorn: Poems that is collected here along with the appendix of the African terminology and tradition that makes up much of the imagery, Lorde speaks of Black women in mythological language to empower her people. This is also a reclamation of Pan-African tradition from the male-dominated literary field to embody heritage as a source for women's strength. She also speaks eloquently on sexuality between two women, which was particularly bold for the time in which she was publishing. Lorde had something to say, and he was determined to say it loud, say it proudly and in a way that would always live inside the reader. Touching you I catch midnight as moon fires set in my throat I love you flesh into blossom I made you and take you made into me. -from Recreation There are few poets who empower and inspire as much as Audre Lorde much less live a life of activism as powerfully and proudly as she did. Her words are immortalized in her perfect prose and no reader who devours them will ever be the same. Drop everything and read Audre Lorde. 5/5 Power The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds and a dead child dragging his shattered black face off the edge of my sleep blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders is the only liquid for miles and my stomach churns at the imagined taste while my mouth splits into dry lips without loyalty or reason thirsting for the wetness of his blood as it sinks into the whiteness of the desert where I am lost without imagery or magic trying to make power out of hatred and destruction trying to heal my dying son with kisses only the sun will bleach his bones quicker. A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood and a voice said "Die you little motherfucker" and there are tapes to prove it. At his trial this policeman said in his own defense "I didn't notice the size nor nothing else only the color". And there are tapes to prove that, too. Today that 37 year old white man with 13 years of police forcing was set free by eleven white men who said they were satisfied justice had been done and one Black Woman who said "They convinced me" meaning they had dragged her 4'10'' black Woman's frame over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval until she let go the first real power she ever had and lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children. I have not been able to touch the destruction within me. But unless I learn to use the difference between poetry and rhetoric my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire and one day I will take my teenaged plug and connect it to the nearest socket raping an 85 year old white woman who is somebody's mother and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time "Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-04 00:00:00 Francis Lachance I've been reading through these poems again for a while now and love them as much as ever. So much to think about.