Summary Of Poetry Is Not A Luxury, By Audre Lorde

As a queer, black woman living during the height of the Civil Rights movement, Audre Lorde conducted much of her social activism through poetry, believing that her writing offered a medium for women to communicate their emotions. She offered many implications in her early works, urging minority groups to pursue equal rights. Resultantly, Lorde reflects on this poetic activism in her 1985 essay, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, where she argues about the role poems play in personal expression and political advancement. Accordingly, she draws many parallels between her essay arguments and her poems’ underlying themes. In her 1978 poem, “A Woman Speaks,” Lorde shares a personal message through three stanzas enriched with literary devices to describe

Lorde is framing feminine power as a complex ideology intended to be publicized in society. Despite living during a progressive era for female musicians and artists, her first lines likely refer to the years of written history and cultural influence lost to oppression. She portrays a situation that pressures her female readers to consider the inconceivable amount of their own stories disregard for male achievements as well as their generational obligation to use their internal power and restore these archives. She also alludes to racial groups such as her own Black community, as African-American language, history, and culture struggled to survive centuries of colonialism. In either case, Lorde immediately tailors these first lines to establish the contemporary political situation, which alludes to Lorde’s following lines about seeking “no favor / untouched by blood / unrelenting as the curse of love”(5-7). The prefix repetition serves as an example of parallel structure, using “un” to emphasize the strength binding her “blood” or

Understandably, the reader may misunderstand why Lorde did not simply state “I am a Black woman.” However, her unusual syntax emphasizes womanhood within the lines. Foremost, Lorde is a woman carrying the powers driven deep inside all females, regardless of race or additional identity. She may be Black and queer, but it is her feminine side that takes precedence as the woman speaking, starting her plans to enlighten her readers. Though initially unapparent, “A Woman Speaks” is author-referential. Lorde describes how she shares her feminine pursuits, historic obligations, and poetic process while informing the reader about the significance of Dahomey and Womanhood. The final stanza reveals her intentions to reveal her power, regardless of potential lashback, with the poem serving as the start of her ambitions. Ultimately, Lorde’s poem tells a story about fighting oppression with expression, sharing the untold feminine history long integrated into the societal power structure. Though many of her lines relate to the feminine struggle, the poem’s message extends beyond