Source of book: I own this
So, if a child decides she wants to drop the “y” from her name, because she likes the artistic symmetry of two five-letter names ending in “e,” she might grow up to be a poet.
Audre Lorde was more than a poet, of course. She was an activist for racial justice, for gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and disability rights. She wrote extensively in prose as well as poetry, but it is her poetry that most puts her in the pantheon of American writers.
One could definitely mention her contributions to 3rd Wave Feminism, to the development of Womanism (black feminism, more or less, but that is an oversimplification), and to intersectionality. Hey, how about a pithy quote to start this off?
“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.”
Lorde had terrible eyesight - she qualified as legally blind - and had multiple bouts with breast cancer, which finally killed her at age 58. She wrote about all of this too.
I selected Coal from my collected poems for two reasons. First, it was the book that catapulted her to popularity as a poet. Second, it came out the year I was born.
The poems are on a wide range of subjects, from the political to the personal, from nature to social justice, from introspection to a broad view. Furthermore, they span from traditional forms to free verse. Overall, they are excellent, so picking a few to feature was tough. Here are the ones I decided to go with:
Let’s start with the title poem.
Coal
I
Is the total black, being spoken
From the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open.
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
How a sound comes into a word, coloured
By who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open
Like a diamond on glass windows
Singing out within the crash of passing sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—
And come whatever wills all chances
The stub remains
An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue
To explode through my lips
Like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
Bedevil me.
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.
There is a lot to unpack there. Coal and diamonds, both made of the same carbon. The metaphor is applied to her color, but also to her voice. I think I see something different each time I read it.
Lorde had a difficult relationship with her parents. They were busy with their real estate business, and often left her alone and neglected. They tended to be cold and unaffectionate - they may not even have wanted a child. And they never accepted her sexuality, so things did not improve later. A number of the poems in this collection talk about her fraught childhood, and particularly the problems with her mother.
Story Books on a Kitchen Table
Out of her womb of pain my mother spat me
into her ill-fitting harness of despair
into her deceits
where my anger re-conceived me
piercing my eyes like arrows
pointed by her nightmare
of who I was not
becoming.
Going away
she left in her place
iron maidens to protect me
and for my food
the wrinkled milk of legend
where I wandered through the lonely rooms of afternoon
wrapped in nightmares
from the Orange and Red and Yellow
Purple and Blue and Green
Fairy Books
where White witches ruled
over the empty kitchen table
and never wept
or offered gold
nor any enchantment
for the vanished mother
of a black girl.
I never read those fairy books - but my wife did. I really love the line in the poem “her nightmare / of who I was not / becoming.” I understand that feeling. From the child’s point of view. I have purposed that I will never do that to my own children (although I fear I may anyway…sigh.) I want to discover who my children are becoming, not try to force them to be who I fantasize them to be.
She also felt that each generation betrayed the next - a dynamic I feel increasingly aware of these days.
This one is incredible - I put three exclamation points next to my note after reading it.
Generation
How the young attempt and are broken
differs from age to age
We were brown free girls
love singing beneath our skin
sun in our hair in our eyes
sun our fortune
and the wind had made us golden
made us gay.
In a season of limited power
we wept out our promises
And these are the children we try now
for temptations that wear our face.
But who comes back from our latched cities of falsehood
to warn them that the road to nowhere
is slippery with our blood
to warn them
they need not drink the river to get home
since we have purchased bridges
with our mothers’ blood gold;-
for now we are more than kin
who come to share
not only blood
but the bloodiness of our failures.
How the young are tempted and betrayed
into slaughter or conformity
is a turn of the mirror
time’s question only.
In a very different vein is this deliciously erotic poem.
On a Night of the Full Moon
I
Out of my flesh that hungers
and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking
for reason.
The curve of your waiting body
fits my waiting hand
your breasts warm as sunlight
your lips quick as young birds
between your thighs the sweet
sharp taste of limes.
Thus I hold you
frank in my heart’s eye
in my skin’s knowing
as my fingers conceive your flesh
I feel your stomach
moving against me.
Before the moon wanes again
we shall come together.
II
And I would be the moon
spoken over your beckoning flesh
breaking against reservations
beaching thought
my hands at your high tide
over and under inside you
and the passing of hungers
attended, forgotten
Darkly risen
the moon speaks
my eyes
judging your roundness
Delightful.
“Poem for a Poet” is a bit long to quote, but the opening lines are so striking, I wanted to at least mention them.
I think of a coffin’s quiet
when I sit in the world of my car
separate and observing
with the windows closed and washed clean
by the rain.
From “Dreams Bite,” there is another haunting line:
The people of the sun
are carving
their own children
into monuments
of war.
Here is another devastating picture:
Hard Love Rock
Today I heard my heart screeching like a subway train
loudly enough to remind me it was still human
loudly enough to hurt
but telling me still
you were a ghost I had
better left in the cradle,
telling me still
that our tracks ran around
instead of straight out past the sewers
that I would have nothing for barter left
not even the print of love’s grain
pressed into my flesh from our wooden cross
left splintered and shapeless
after the slaughter.
And when it was over
only pain.
I wonder what life experience Lorde distilled into that poem? A miscarriage or abortion? A bad breakup? This next poem is on its surface about a mixed race family. But it is also about Lorde’s parents. Her mother was light colored, and could pass for white sometimes. Despite marrying a darker man, she continued to be prejudiced against darker people - including Audre, who took after her father. Man, that’s just a mixed up family dynamic. But Lorde captures it so well in this poem.
And What About the Children
Now we’ve made a child.
and the dire predictions
have changed into wild
grim
speculations;
still the negatives
are waiting
watching
and the relatives
keep right on
Touching…
and how much curl
is right for a girl?
But if it is said
at some future date
that my son’s head
is on straight
he won’t care
about his
hair
nor give a damn
whose wife
I am.
I will end with a bittersweet poem on loss. It is almost too beautiful for words. It is also one of her poems in a traditional form. It reminds me a little of Emily Dickinson, but with Lorde’s own voice, of course.
Memorial I
If you come as softly
as wind within the trees
you may hear what I hear
see what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
as the threading dew
I shall take you gladly
nor ask more of you.
You may sit beside me
silent as a breath
and only those who stay dead
shall remember death.
If you come I will be silent
nor speak harsh words to you -
I will not ask you why, now,
nor how, nor what you knew.
But we shall sit here softly
beneath two different years
and the rich earth between us
shall drink our tears.
As usual, this is just a taste of a wonderful collection that is worth reading in its entirety. In fact, now that Norton has released Lorde’s collected poems, I’d recommend just buying and reading the whole thing.
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