Responding to Lorde - Rachel

In her essay, “Poetry is not a Luxury”, Audre Lorde uses specific word choice to emphasize the importance of poetry, specifically to a women. Lorde begins the essay as equating poetry with illumination, this motif of light and dark resonates throughout the rest of the essay and moves on to a racial undertone between black and white. Lorde explains that within each woman there is a dark place of possibility, thus stating that dark is not negative but an ambiguous potential. Later she says, “[Poetry] forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change”. Poetry is what brings to women the illumination of sustainability. Women need poetry to survive due to the ways in which the white man “distorted” poetry, therefore limited them. Lorde often discusses “white fathers” and the “european mode” perhaps to emphasize her own identity as an African American woman. Lorde does not outright criticize the “white fathers”, but comments on their perspective as being more analytical, whereas poetry is not. Women rely more on their feelings and what cannot be seen, while men are more rational. Descartes famous quote, “I think, therefore I am”, is what Lorde chooses to describe the male way of thinking. Lorde’s approach to describing poetry is very abstract; she defines the art of poetry as essentially, “naming the nameless”. Poetry explains the feelings that we do not know how to directly to define. Lorde also refers to poetry in terms of anatomical qualities; poetry is a “skeleton” and a vital necessity for women. Evidently, Lorde emphasizes her own passion for poetry as an empowering force that all women have the capability to use.