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.
Lorde, Audre. “Poetry Is Not a Luxury (1985)”. Sister Outsider, Penguin Books, 2019.
In this passage from Audre Lorde’s “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, Lorde presents us with a fresh way of thinking about poetry and how it functions. She weaves in a really interesting metaphor that creates a sense of construction being at work when poetry is created. The construction of what exactly is hard to grasp upon the first few reads. To understand what she means in the first sentence, it was helpful to me to think about thoughts and where they are derived from. I often experience feelings first, which are then followed by thoughts that put an identity and name to my feelings. I view poetry in the same way as this raw emotion and feeling that I experience before being able to form thoughts about my experiences. This idea is further supported in the second line. She says that the “farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems”. I understood this to mean that the deepest and unreachable parts of ourselves are sedimented and made more tangible through poetry. The use of “cobbled” is an interesting word choice and reminded me of how one cobbles a road. I think it helps to convey the concretizing effect of poetry. This sentence was my key as I feel that I have a solid understanding of it, which is ironic because it was one of the lines I was most confused by when I initially read this essay. This line conveys the extent to which poetry can be utilized as a tool for self-exploration. I believe Lorde is writing to minority communities in this piece, and in this quote I feel that she urges self-exploration beyond the limiting ideals that society places on such groups. My lock is the end of the quote where Lorde says “carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives”. I am unsure whether Lorde means that poems are carved from our experiences or that our hopes and fears are carved from our experiences, but perhaps it could be both. It is evident through the use of the phrase “rock experiences” that the end of this quote ties into the road-building metaphor Lorde maintains in this passage, but I find it hard to wrap my head around exactly what she is trying to convey here.
Hey Dasia, just commenting for the lock and key. It is pretty interesting that your key is the second sentence mainly because that would be my lock. However, after looking at your explanation of the second sentence it does make sense since you mentioned that it could relate to minority communities and how they are empowered by her writing to self-exploration regardless of all the struggles society throws their way. But I definitely do relate with your lock as “carved from rock experiences” could come out as confusing. This whole writing of hers includes a lot of metaphors and sometimes I also have trouble wrapping my head around it just because it most likely has a deeper meaning than I think.
Hi Dasia! This is a really great analysis of such a short yet multi-layered passage. I really loved your explanation of “cobbled” as implying that poetry cobbles a road with which we can explore the deepest parts of ourselves, the farthest horizon of our hopes and fears. I tend to believe that the greatest pieces of art function this way, they hold up a mirror to parts of the human soul that lie so deep within us that we do not have the words to describe them. Your assertion that Lorde was writing to minority communities makes a lot of sense as well, especially since their role in predominantly white societies have been largely determined for them before they were even born.