Audre Lorde and her Impact on Modern Poetry
By: Kieran McIntire
When you think to yourself about famous poets, who comes to mind? Edgar Allan Poe? William Shakespeare? Robert Frost? Maybe not, but in history these are three of the most famous poets to ever live. However, what about the lesser known poets, those who are people of color, or people of the LGBT community? When will history shine it’s light on them? For most of these poets, this might be never, just more work written and released out into the wind. However some have been able to make their way in the world of literature and art. One of these is Audre Lorde.
Audre Lorde once described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” For all of her life, she dedicated her poems to bringing light to the issues going on in this world. Her poems brought light to issues like homophobia, racism, sexism, and classism. Originally married to Edward Rollins, she had her two children, Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins. Less than two years after becoming divorced from Edward, she found her partner Frances Clayton, to whom she would spend the rest of her life with. Unfortunately, Audre died at 58 from breast cancer, leaving some of her work, simply floating in the wind like most poetry from poets like her. Read more about Audre Lorde at the Poetry Foundation.
An excerpt from Lorde’s poem Sisters in Arms says:
In this poem, Lorde focuses on women in other countries struggling through war, and confronting death face to face everyday.
Although Lorde has left us, there are many poets still here and gifting us with their words of wisdom and equality. One of these poets is Danez Smith, who spreads their work with many different modern publications like the Dark Noise Collective which they founded. One of Smith’s poems called Notes resinates with some similar topics that Lorde also covers in Sisters in Arms:
“how is the war? is it eating?tell me of the girls chargingbackwards into dumb tidesdeath’s wet mouth lappingtheir ankles, knees, eyebrows.tell me of the sissies like drunkfireworks, rocketing into earthafterimage burned into river& cement memory.how is the war? does it havea wife? does she know howthe bodies got in her bed?”In this poem Smith writes to Suicide, starting each new stanza with “dear suicide,” they ask about the war and what is not covered in the news. This is what these little girls are living through, the struggle of keeping their heads above water while they are surrounded by war and death.
An image of Danez Smith for their bio on their website.
Many more poets like Lorde, and Smith are waiting to be more that just a whisper of meaningful words on the wind. And those who aren’t lucky enough are waiting, waiting until they can give it away, hand it to the world see who takes it.
Audre and her partner Frances.