Audre Lorde, Poet

Audre Lorde

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"liberation is not the private province of any one particular group"

"When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
—Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Read the rest of this bio at: http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/RYAN.HTML

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 sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other 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 word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

The Black Unicorn: Poems Audre Lorde / Paperback

A Burst of Light Audre Lorde / Paperback

The Cancer Journals Audre Lorde / Paperback

The Cancer Journals Audre Lorde / Hardcover

Coal Audre Lorde / Paperback

The Coll Poems of Audre Lorde Audre Lorde / Hardcover

Every Woman I've Ever Loved: Lesbian Writers on Their Mothers Catherine Reid, Claudia Bepko, Dorothy Allison ,Audre Lorde / Paperback

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance Audre Lorde / Paperback

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems 1987-1992 Audre Lorde / Hardcover

Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices, Vol. 2 Audre Lorde / Paperback

Our Dead behind Us: Poems Audre Lorde / Paperback

Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches Audre Lorde / Paperback

Undersong: Chosen Poems, Old and New, Rev Ed. Audre Lorde / Hardcover

Undersong: Chosen Poems Old & New Audre Lorde / Paperback

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Audre Lorde / Paperback

Apartheid U. S. A. & Our Common Enemy, Our Common Cause: Freedom Organizing in the Eighties Audre Lorde / Paperback

A Burst of Light Audre Lorde / Hardcover

From a Land Where Other People Live Audre Lorde / Paperback

Hell under God's Orders: Hurricane Hugo in St. Croix--Disaster and Survival Audre Lorde, Hortense M. Rowe, Gloria I. Joseph (Editor) / Paperback

I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing across Sexualities Audre Lorde / Paperback