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.
Source: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997)
About Audre Lorde
Self-described as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde was born on February 18th, 1934, in New York City. A daughter to West Indian immigrant parents, she dedicated both her life and her creative gifts to confronting and addressing injustices of sexism, homophobia, racism, and classism.
Commenting on her poetic beginnings in Black Women Writers, Lorde said:
“I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn’t find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that’s what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen.”
Education, Marriage, and Being a Black Woman In White Academia
Earning her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University, Lorde worked as a librarian in New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She was married to Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in 1970, and two years later, in 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. During this time, she also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Lorde's experiences with pedagogy and teaching and her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia, informed both her life and her work. Her contributions to queer theory, feminist theory, and critical race studies, interweave her own personal experiences with broader political aims.
Collections of Poetry and Protest Poems
Lorde’s early collections of poetry include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972) - nominated for a National Book Award. Her later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), included many powerful poems of protest. Addressing those poems, she once said:
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain.”
Explaining “Power,” a poem about the police shooting of a ten-year-old black child, Lorde said:
“A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem.”
Liberation Movements, Queer Sexuality and Experience
Modern society’s tendency to categorize groups of people, not only inspired Lorde to fight the marginalization of categories such as “black woman” and “lesbian”, but also made her a central figure to many activist circles and liberation movements.
Her poetry is known for the power of its social and racial justice call, as well as its portraying of queer sexuality and experience.
Speaking to interviewer Charles H. Rowell of Callaloo, Lorde said:
“My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds… [White, arch-conservative senator] Jesse Helms’s objection to my work is not about obscenity … or even about sex. It is about revolution and change.”
Prose Works and the Theme of Celebrating Differences
Lorde was a noted prose writer as much as she was a poet. In 1982 she published the novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which was described by the publishers as a “biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth.” Lorde’s collected nonfiction prose Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), has become a canonical text in Black studies, queer theory and women’s studies, and A Burst of Light (1988), her other collection of essays, won the National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997.
Allison Kimmich noted in Feminist Writers,
“Throughout all of Audre Lorde’s writing, both nonfiction and fiction, a single theme surfaces repeatedly. The black lesbian feminist poet activist reminds her readers that they ignore differences among people at their peril … Instead, Lorde suggests, differences in race or class must serve as a ‘reason for celebration and growth."
Lorde died on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix. In an African naming ceremony before her death, she took the name Gamba Adisa, which means "Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known".
Audre Lorde: Essential Books on Sale Now
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (paperback)
"These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."--Adrienne Rich
"The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms--beautifully, forcefully--for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."--Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."--Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."--Out Magazine
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Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers" Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page."--Off Our Backs" Among the elements that make the book so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness, characteristics that shine through the writing bespeaking the evolution of a strong and remarkable character."--The New York Times
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Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (paperback)
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature.
"[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware."--The New York Times
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to "never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . "
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