It’s been five months to the day since my blog has been around here. Time flies, and I’ve missed you all and, I’ve missed poetry in my life. So here’s to poetry, and I hope I’m back.
This week I read, for the first time, Audre Lorde’s essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” It is a good antiracist piece to read for Black History Month, and beyond. You can find the short piece here in PDF form. Here are some quotes that spoke to me today.
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems.
Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.
The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us–the poet–whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free.
Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.
~by Andre Lorde from “Sister Outsider: essays and speeches” page 36. Published by Crossing Press, 1985.
On Being Without Poetry
My poetry was paralyzed
So news events hit oversized
Royal family code vaporized
November’s red wave unrealized
Classified docs getting analyzed
House decorum animalized
Severe earthquake terrorized
Twitter execs scrutinized
UFO blastings authorized
Inane inquisitions formalized
Truth and impartiality despised
Reasonable reckoning pulverized
Justice and morality compromised
Too much news without poetry
Thoughts emphasized
Feelings minimized
But now the poetic truth
Realized
Crystallized
News is more bearable
After
Dreams
And poems
~By Denise Krebs
12 February 2023
Even though most poetry has been absent, I did enjoy a tiny taste over the past few months. If you haven’t already, you might want to follow these sweet tastes of poetry shared at poetryisnotaluxury:
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You can follow another account to learn more about Audre Lorde and how, even in death, she continues to bring people together in community. The Audre Lorde Project
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