Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions our dreams imply and some of our old ideas disparage. In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility made real. 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.”
Poetry is not a Luxury – Audre Lorde
To me, Lorde is trying to speak to women in general. She is trying to communicate to them the vitalness of keeping their emotions and not losing to the idea of what they should be or what they can become. She emphasizes that by losing emotions, cuts off a vital portion of what it means to be human, and more specifically, what it means to be a woman. She does this through her word choice; she talks about the idea of “head saving us” and “brain alone will set us free” being “drugs.” She uses this to increase the urgency of her message to women and makes the importance of poetry to being a woman. She also uses “heretical” and “disparage,” talking about how the world will try to discourage women’s creativity and how women need to support each other in being creative. These words emphasize how harsh the world can be to creative women and further stress how important her message truly is. It also invokes the cultural context of the Spanish Inquisition and the Witch hunts of the past, and the intense persecution different groups of people and especially women, experienced.
Key: To me, what makes the most sense about the passage is the sense of urgency conveyed through her word choice. This work is a call to action to implore women not to let the world (more specifically older men) discourage or disparage their efforts.
Lock: Something I sometimes struggle with in Lorde’s piece is she tends to be really wordy. This extra length forces me to reread it and also causes some confusion to me. For example, I do not fully understand how “There are only old… courage to try them out” fully relates to the passage. This means I could be missing out on the author’s meaning.
Lock: I had the same experience as you did when I read this passage, but I felt that the wordiness forced me to sit with and process Lorde’s writing because it was confusing. I am curious if this was intentional.
However, the quote you specifically mentioned is also the concept I struggled with. I am not sure what Lorde meant when she mentioned that there are no new ideas, but I hypothesize that it is very important because she wrote it twice.