I enjoyed this volume of poetry, and really connected to some of the poems. Others had less personal meaning to me, partly because I don't have a lot in common with the poet. However, even the ones I didn't personally connect with were usually very powerful and often emotional. ( )

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my ambitions for 2016 was to read more poetry. A few days ago I found a couple of reviews over on GR which recommended Lorde's work.

I have no intention of writing much about my impressions of her poetry or try an interpretation based on the author's life and experience (as if I could). Some of the poems were more tangible than others, but I thought I'd offer up some examples:

*****
COPING

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen
sun
forget
and drown easily.

***
CONTACT LENSES

Lacking what they want to see
makes my eyes hungry
and eyes can feel
only pain.


Once I lived behind thick walls
of glass
and my eyes belonged
to a different ethic
timidly rubbing the edges
of whatever turned them on.
Seeing usually
was a matter of what was
in front of my eyes
matching what was
behind my brain.
Now my eyes have become
a part of me exposed
quick risky and open
to all the same dangers.

I see much
better now
and my eyes hurt. ( )

African folklore collides with the modern world in this provocative collection of poetry. Lorde explores darkness here, the beauty of black and the deep abyss of sorrow. A common style in these poems is to have one thought collide with the next, a line of text in the middle rubbing against both of the lines above and below it, so that it becomes torn between two different meanings.

Many of these poems are laced with anger and many lovingly paying homage to people either real and mythical. It's a beautiful and brutal collection that lingers, leaving one with a sense of uncertainty to the places they've just been. ( )

"your love runs through me like undigested spinach" is an unforgettable line and worth the price of admission ( )

"Refusing to be circumscribed by any simple identity, Audre Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity. Her rhythms and accents have the timelessness of a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America, beyond the North American earth, to Abomey and the Dahomeyan Amazons. These are poems nourished in an oral tradition, which also blaze and pulse on the page, beneath the reader's eye." Adrienne Rich