The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems, 1987-1992

by Audre Lorde

“This volume resonates with some of the finest poems Audre Lorde ever wrote: sinewy, lyrical, celebratory even in the face of death, and always political in the best sense. Now the poet is gone―but the work lives, and sings.” ―Robin Morgan This collection, 39 poems written between 1987 and 1992, is the final volume by "a major American poet whose concerns are international, and whose words have left their mark on many lives,” in the words of Adrienne Rich. Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was the author of ten volumes of poetry and five works of prose. She was named New York State Poet in 1991; her other honors include the Manhattan Borough President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Feminism, LGBT, African American, Gender, Womens

70 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Audre Lorde was a revolutionary Black feminist. Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. During this time, she was politically active in civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet's Press and edited by Diane di Prima, a former classmate and friend from Hunter College High School. Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that Lorde "does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone."

Her second volume, Cables to Rage (1970), which was mainly written during her tenure at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, addressed themes of love, betrayal, childbirth and the complexities of raising children. It is particularly noteworthy for the poem "Martha", in which Lorde poetically confirms her homosexuality: "[W]e shall love each other here if ever at all." Later books continued her political aims in lesbian and gay rights, and feminism. In 1980, together with Barbara Smith and Cherríe Moraga, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of colour. Lorde was State Poet of New York from 1991 to 1992.

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Reviews

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend Jean gave me The Marvelous Arithmetic of Distance 25 years ago. I know because she xxx the book for me. If you'd asked me, I would have said that she'd given it to me 10-15 years ago, but she has been dead for six years now. Marvelous Arithmetichas sat in my bathroom, then by my bed for those 25 years, waiting for me to open her.

Jean was a poet (among other things) and wanted to share her love of poetry with me – as well as other books that she enjoyed. She gave me a book of Mary Oliver's poems, as well as books of essays.

These 39 poems were written between 1987, when her relationship with Frances Clayton died, and 1992, the year that Lorde died of breast cancer.

I love her repetition and spacing (which I've indicated by a single slash, as GR won't allow extra spaces:

I read your name in memorial poems
and think they must be insane
mistaken / malicious
in terrible error
just plain wrong (from Girlfriend)

And from the poem on the obverse page:

I can't believe you are gone
out of my life
So you are not. (from Lunar Eclipse)

And because I love the vulnerability and intimacy of this poem:

If I call you son and not brother
it is because i pray
my son learns your conceit / your daring
who came so late / and left too soon
If I call you brother and not son
it is to mourn my own loss
that my mother did not live long enough
to bear you. (from For Craig)

Maybe I'll reduce the pile of books by my bedside this year, especially if I find books like this.

Probably not, though.

[aya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really feeling her spacing and phrasing. fuck!

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rushing headlong
into new silence
your face
dips on my horizon
the name
of a cherished dream
riding my anchor
one sweet season
to cast off
on another voyage

No reckoning allowed
save the marvelous arithmetic
of distance

- Smelling the Wind, pg. 3

* * *

Gloria has a permit
to change the earth
plucks flies
from the air
while discussing
revolution
is taken for local
in a lot
of different places.

- Building, pg. 26

* * *

The cockroach
who is dying
and the woman
who is blind
agree
not to notice
each other's shame.

- Kitchen Linoleum, pg. 36

* * *

Timber seasons better
if it is cut in the fourth quarter
of a barren sign.

In Cancer
the most fertile of skysigns
I shall build a house
that will stand forever.

- Construction, pg. 47

* * *

In whose bed
did I lie asweat
as the first thrush sounded
telling myself stories
of someone I used to be
hurling myself
at the unfamiliar shore
taunting the rocks' long shadow
till the waves beat my rage
back to spindrift
and my wars came home?

The girls who live
at the edge of the calm pool
where the moon rises
teach me
to leave dreams alone.

- Change, pg. 56

[hel · Rating 5 out of 5]

audre…i will always love you

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“100,000 bees make a sturdy hive
ready three days after the moon is full
we cut honey.

Our hot knives slice the caps of wax
from each heavy frame
dark pollened richness drips
from the laden combs.

Sadiq loads the extractor
Curtis leveling the spin.
Sweet creeps like bees
through each crack of hot air.

Outside the honey house
hungry drones cluster
low-voiced and steady
we strain the flow laughing
drunk with honey.

Before twilight
long rows of bottles stand
labeled and waiting.

Tomorrow we make a living
two dollars at a time.”

[Haja · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the whole earth is trembling / and no one is talking”
so many lines, phrases, breaks and pauses that hit me. very, very rich poems. Leaves me thinking of trains, honey, death, the moon, and the absolute sacredness of it all. like she writes in the electric slide boogie, “how hard it is to sleep/ in the middle of life.” truly a voice we’d be lost without

[Sameer Vasta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This reflection was originally published on inthemargins.ca and references the following books:

- A Poetry Handbook , by Mary Oliver
- Citizen: An American Lyric , by Claudia Rankine
- Islands of Decolonial Love , by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance , by Audre Lorde
- Summons: Poems from Tanzania
- This Accident of Being Lost , by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- Upstream , by Mary Oliver

**** **** ****

"The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute but to the extravagant and the possible."

from Upstream , by Mary Oliver

- - - - -

In the fourth grade, we received an assignment to write a poem. A few days later, we were to hand in our poems to the teacher, who would look them over that afternoon, and we would then recite them out loud to the class the next day. The morning after handing mine in, my teacher pulled me aside and told me she needed to see me after class; I would not be allowed to read my poem to the rest of the class, that day.

Crestfallen, I listened to the work of my friends, and cheered them on. That afternoon, before getting on the bus, my teacher pulled me aside and asked, "who taught you how to write this?"

I will not pretend that my submission was good, but it was different. Unlike the acrostics, haikus, limericks, and quatrains we were learning about in class and that most of my peers had written, my poem was three pages long, written in sestets with an aabbab rhyme sequence. It was an ode to a young lady in my class—I think her name was Michelle A—where I did not mention her, but instead how the world changed when she entered the room. The imagery was rudimentary and the diction plain, but it was different enough from what we were learning that my teacher was perplexed.

The honest truth was that I had discovered Wordsworth earlier that year and was so impressed by his poetry that I had spent weeks imitating his style. The nuance of his language and much of his content was above my head, but by the time I got around to reading "Lucy Gray," it did not matter that I did not understand what he was saying, but instead that the musicality of his language was enthralling. I wanted to write poems that sounded like song, and so I attempted to do that in my sprawling three-page ode.

I did end up being allowed to read my poem in class the next day. The subject of the ode was oblivious; she did not see herself in the words, and like the rest of the class, thought me pretentious and too much of a try-hard. They were all right, of course. I didn't know what I was doing, but instead was trying to impress others with my feeble imitation.

Into my late teens, I continued to write poetry, and was lucky enough to have a few of my pieces printed in small journals and magazines. And then, one day, I stopped. I stopped writing poetry, and I stopped reading it.

Until this year.

- - - - -

"The beauty and strangeness of the world may fill the eyes with its cordial refreshment. Equally it may offer the heart a dish of terror. On one side is radiance; on another is the abyss."

from Upstream , by Mary Oliver

- - - - -

If we were all taught poetry in school the way that Mary Oliver teaches the art in A Poetry Handbook , we would all be poets today. Yes, there is discussion about meter and rhyme, but Oliver opens the book with an in-depth look at sound, at how the way we read poetry is an aural experience, and how it is that sound that makes poetry resonate—both metaphorically and literally, when read out loud. Reading this chapter, I am reminded of the first time I read Wordsworth, when I was not yet nine years old, and immediately realized that poetry was about the music you heard when you read it, and not about the strict adherence to form that we had been learning in school.

Oliver does remind us that form is important, along with diction, voice, tone, and so much more—that all of these go into the true musicality and resonance of the poem—but opening her handbook with sound was what made my heart stir. This is how I wish I was taught poetry: to learn how sound influenced the soul, and how poetry—how beautiful writing of any kind—could make the spirit flourish.

I have written out this passage from Oliver's Handbook and left it on my desk as a reminder of what I can do, what I should do, when I write, and what I should listen for, when I read:

"Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part—the content, the pace, the diction, the rhythm, the tone—as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it."

I am diving back into poetry this year, and I am looking forward to the sliding, the floating, the thumping, the rapping.

- - - - -

"Writing actually sucks. Like you're alone in your head for days on end, just wondering if you actually can die of loneliness, just wondering how healthy it is to make all this shit up, and just wondering if you did actually make this shit up, or if you just copied down your life or worse someone else's life, or maybe you're just feeding your delusions and neuroses and then advertising it to whoever reads your drivel."

from This Accident of Being Lost , by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

- - - - -

My colleague and friend Adie was the first to hand me her copy of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Islands of Decolonial Love . It sat on my bookshelf for a few weeks, but once I picked it up, I could not put it down. Instead, when I had turned its final page, I quickly went on to read Simpson's follow-up, This Accident of Being Lost , which was just as enthralling.

Most of the poetry we grew up reading was by white people, white men in particular. Eventually, in my late teens, I learned of Latin American poets like Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, and of Middle Eastern poets like el-Fagommi and Rasha Omran, but still, my exposure to poetry was still defined by the Western "classics."

Simpson's collections remind me that there is another view onto the world, that poetry is not just art or craft but also a reflection of life, an expression of emotion and vulnerability and questioning. It can be raw and incisive, and in Simpson's writing, it most often is:

"If I had ten minutes alone with you, I'd tell you that I love you. I'd tell you not to be scared, because it's the kind of love that doesn't want anything or need anything. It's the kind of love that just sits there and envelops whoever you are or whoever you want to be. It doesn't demand. It isn't a commodity. It doesn't threaten all the other people you love. It doesn't fuck up and it doesn't fuck things up. It's loyal. It's willing to feel hurt. It's willing to exist on shifting terms. It's willing to stay anyway. It doesn't want. It's just there. It's just there and good and given freely, sewing up the holes unassumingly because it's the only thing to do. There is so much space around it and the space shimmers."

When I was young, poetry was presented to me in one way. Now that I am re-immersing myself, I am excited to find the other paths through verse—the paths carved by people whose voices were often silenced and definitely need to be heard.

- - - - -

Then there is dissatisfaction,
the flesh, the heart and the soul,
and most especially the mind.
There I always an antagonised ideal
in this antagonistic world:
there is always a craving desire
to satisfy the flesh,
the heart, the soul
and most especially the mind.
And one never gets all
and there is always dissatisfaction.

from "Then there is dissatisfaction" by Manga J. Kingazi Mmgaha, in Summons: Poems from Tanzania

- - - - -

Early this year, I received a parcel in the mail. In it, a copy of Summons: Poems from Tanzania , and a note from a new friend I had made in the fall. In her note, she remarked upon a conversation we had when we first met, where I told her that I was born in Tanzania, and that she told me that she had worked in East Africa, many years ago at the start of her career, and still held a fondness for the region. The collection of poems was one of the mementos she had kept from her time there, and it was now mine to have.

It is a modest collection, and I did not connect with every piece, but it got me thinking: why is poetry not an appropriate way to learn about our own history? How can we discover who we are and from whence we came through verse—and why do we not do this more often?

- - - - -

There is a timbre of voice
that comes from not being heard
and knowing    you are not being
heard    noticed only
by others    not heard
for the same reason.

from "Echoes" by Audre Lorde, in The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance

- - - - -

In elementary school, I learned that poetry was about beauty. I learned that a poem was written to extol, to recognize, to celebrate. We were given odes and sonnets to read, each talking about love and joy and sometimes heartbreak, but beautiful heartbreak. We weren't taught that sometimes, poetry comes of anger, of despair, of rebellion, of revolt. We were taught that we could express the range of human emotion through verse, but then were driven towards only the emotions that echoed with pleasantness.

We were not taught that poetry was a way to speak truth to power. It took me far too long to realize this.

I finally understood this when I picked up Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric and read the now iconic but painfully true stanza:

because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying

Rankine's Citizen is filled with vignettes, prose poems that punch you in the gut while you read them. They are not the poems of my elementary school days: they hurt, enrage, fill you with anguish. They are often harrowing, but they are exactly what we all must read in order to understand our current era. At times, we feel as though these are words used as weapons, verses used as bludgeons, emptiness on the page used as pauses to reflect and recover from the blows.

I am currently reading Audre Lorde's The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance . Like Rankine does in Citizen , Lorde speaks of a life lived as a Black woman, and speaks the truth of all the joys and pains of that experience.

They are both speaking truth to power. They are both making sure we sit up and listen, and ideally, do something about the injustices they reference. They are using poetry to enlighten, to incite, to create change; they do this with power, with strength, and with beauty.

Perhaps my elementary school teachers were right: poetry is about beauty. They were just wrong in telling us what beauty could look like once it was in verse.

- - - - -

"First and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artificial, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed.”

from Upstream , by Mary Oliver

- - - - -

I am reading poetry, now, after many years away. I am not writing it just yet, but I am told by friends that it is inevitable that the more I read, the more I will be besieged by the desire to write. (I will perhaps hold off on writing three-page odes until I have had much more practice.)

For now, I am allowing myself to be enveloped by verse.

For now, I am allowing myself to listen to the sliding, the floating, the thumping, the rapping.

For now, I am allowing myself to see a poem as a place to enter, a place in which to feel.

For now, I am rediscovering poetry, and through it, rediscovering myself.

- - - - -

"Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it—indeed, the world's need of it—these will never pass."

from A Poetry Handbook , by Mary Oliver

**** **** ****

This reflection was originally published on inthemargins.ca and references the following books:

- A Poetry Handbook , by Mary Oliver
- Citizen: An American Lyric , by Claudia Rankine
- Islands of Decolonial Love , by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance , by Audre Lorde
- Summons: Poems from Tanzania
- This Accident of Being Lost , by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- Upstream , by Mary Oliver

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favorite collection by one of my favorite poets, but still full of lines I would never see from another writer and poems that take me deep into whatever it is poems are. Interesting period politics--apartheid, East Berlin, Jesse Helms--and a testament to art, memory, and survival. This book came late in her life, and I wonder how I'll feel differently when I read this book late in my life.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very heavy collection of beautiful and haunting poems of varying lengths and subjects. Definitely will be rereading this collection.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't realize that I'd read a few of Lorde's collections before until I came to goodreads to review this, but I guess I like her pretty all right! Enjoyed this quite a bit.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

And with this, I close out my Audre Lorde poetry excursion. This collection was written towards the end of her life, when she was struggling with cancer, so while there are some poems dealing with race and politics and change and injustice, it also deals a lot with personal loss, and memory, and death, and I found those to be the most poignant, knowing that the lines "How hard it is to sleep in the middle of life" and "I can't just sit here staring death in her face blinking and asking for a new name by which to greet her" were among her last. Powerful in a different kind of way than her previous collections, but just as lushly written.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best poetry utilizes ambiguity to maximize the magic of language. Much of Lorde's poetry does the same, at times bringing her up to the heights of the greats. Lord seems to have found a formal avenue for ambiguity which I haven't noticed consistently in any other writer, namely these interesting little spaces roughly the length of dashes. These operate basically in the place of dashes, but they are much more ambiguous than dashes. Dashes command you to stop, or if you choose to transgress them they at least shout a word of warning. The spaces Lorde uses, however, give you the option: dealer's choice, stop or go. They operate a lot like line endings, where ambiguity is most often fostered. These spaces combine with her line endings to create units within sentences within poems, allowing for many different levels of attention. Multifaceted ambiguity is what give such lush re-reading value to many of these poems. Because Goodreads is hostile to formatting, I've inserted some underscores to maintain rough spacing:

From "Echoes:"

There is a timbre of voice
that comes from not being heard
and knowing __ you are not being
heard __ noticed only
by others __ not heard
for the same reason.


From "Do You Remember Laura:"

One unguarded turn
form curb to never
the car leaps my control
like an adolescent girl
one hand against the windshield
in surprise __ another
saying no __ I did not choose this
death __ I want my say.


In many of these poems there seems to be a congress between line endings, phrases, and sentences, where you can dissect without harming the poem. However, some of them betray the brash overconfidence of political "art," shattering the transcendence of the other poems of the collection. This isn't to say that she is incapable of good political poems. Probably all of her poetry is at least charged with a political dimension and a lived, radical experience. However, it's evident to me that poems like "Hugo I" are far superior to "Thanks to Jesse Jackson." As soon as you start adding in numbers, statistics, and science into your poetry, it's at high risk of failing. If Whitman uses figures, they're buoyed up by his exuberance rather than posing a risk.

Lorde rarely goes long and rarely is exuberant; much of her most powerful late work is short and focuses on the certainty and immanence of death. One example is "Construction:"

Timber seasons better
if it is cut in the fourth quarter
of a barren sign.

In Cancer
the most fertile of skysigns
I shall build a house
that will stand forever.


And another longer example is "Today is Not the Day:"

I can't just sit here
staring death in her face
blinking and asking for a new name
by which to greet her

I am not afraid to say
unembelished
I am dying
but I do not want to do it
looking the other way.

Today is not the day.
It could be
but it is not.
Today is today
in the early moving morning...


The double entendre on Cancer (the astrological sign and the disease which killed her) sent shivers down my spine. These being the last poems she wrote, I felt she cut through things with a death-sharp knife. That's why some of the poems are cringey and political. That's why more of them are haunting and timeless. She shows here a lifetime of artistry, a wisdom blindingly bright in its disposal of the inhibitions of the living. We tiptoe around every day, scared, timid, bursting forth with a false bravado on occasion, but ultimately a bunch of cold conformists. Lorde's final poems are anything but cold, anything but timid. They speak with a soft voice, but the echoes thunder.

Lastly, I wanted to return to the first poem I referenced, because I had actually heard it before in Aesthetics class. In the video of Lorde's recitation, her voice is cracking, she continually has to clear her throat and barely can speak. There is a beautiful poignancy of intellectuals and artists growing old, because it's often when they're most advanced in age that their work is most beautiful, most impactful, most honest. I got a similar feeling when hearing of the death of Roger Scruton, whose lifetime of learning so suddenly ended. In that Aesthetics class I wrote a little about this video, which I quite like: "Though her voice was breaking through much of the video, that only added to her ethos and pathos. One might remark that her embodiment was tenuous at that point, being only two months from the end of her life, but I would argue that we all are equally near, equally mortal; though the particulars of our embodiments may limit our understanding, it can simultaneously universalize and build bridges."

I fear that calling Lorde a radical feminist poet unfairly pigeonholes her. As I said before, likely all of her writing was informed by such politics, but in no way is most of it reducible to that. What it's really reducible to is a soul who felt deeply: a well so deep that even the noon-day sun isn't strong enough to reach the bottom. It takes a lifetime to cultivate that depth, but thankfully each of us has our own lifetime to get there.

[Pavlogreen]

Siento que no he conectado todo lo que podría o debería con estos poemas. Sin duda influye la barrera del idioma, pues siempre me cuesta más captar los matices en otra lengua y más en poesía. No obstante, también tiene que ver con algo más profundo. Creo que estoy acostumbrado a una poesía más filosófica, si se quiere, y cuando leo a un o una poeta que se aparta de esta líniea me cuesta ponerme en situación y entender sus intimidades literarias. Tendré que releer estos poemas para ver si soy capaz de sacarles más jugo la próxima vez, porque pienso que lo tienen. Pese a todo, alguo de los poemas sí me han conmovido y he logrado conectar con ellos. Como suele pasar en la poesía, solo por esos pocos poemas emocionantes entre tantos poemas menos destacados ya merece la pena haber leído el libro.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance makes for a breathtaking volume of poetry. Although it is short, it packs a punch, and I would absolutely recommend it.

The poems flow from one technically beautiful piece to the next. The language used is deliberate, and packs a hefty punch. One of the final poems in the book speaks of her feelings on dying (these were the poems she wrote in the years leading up to her death, as she struggled with cancer), and it was by far the best poem in the volume. That said, the final three lines of a short poem somewhere in the middle of the volume really spoke to me:

we both know women
who take up space
are called sloppy

[Rolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another excellent, excellent collection of poetry from Lorde. Reading through these books mostly makes me feel frustrated that I did not pick them up sooner. As an academic, I typically associate Lorde with critical theory, and not enough with her poetry.

So much good stuff here. The real, bodily desire of “Echoes,” the lived impact of apartheid in “Party Time” and “Prism,” the longform personal history of “Inheritance—His,” the quotidian observations of “Syracuse Airport” and “The Electric Slide Boogie,” the familiar intimacy of “For Craig” and “Lunar Eclipse.” Such an excellent collection.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. This is the kind of poetry that intimidated, frustrated and bored me as a student, because it is dense, layered in meaning and reference. I lacked much of the necessary frames of reference to understand everything Lorde wrote, even now, though I did sort of start at the end here. The poems are both intensely personal and political. As the last volume Lorde produced, it shows a master who knows her craft.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lorde is a powerhouse, and the poems are powerful. I found that most rewarded rereading - due to the choices she made with spacing and punctuation, I "got" each poem significantly more on a second read, when I knew where it was leading, and where best to pause and stress. If I read a poem outloud, I loved it more. Any pieces that I read once and silently, I found difficult and less enjoyable, so this is a collection that rewards attention and intention.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intimidatingly brilliant. And, not an easy read. Lorde has a deceptively fluid and lyrical voice that belies the musculature of her thoughts. She is all that it means to be a modern woman, and more.

[M_P_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lorde's final collection of poetry is ultimately amplified in its emotional gravitas, due to the fact, that they are some of the last works she ever produced. They show such depth, reflection and pure emotion which ultimately came to define the entirety of her body of work

[Amy K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure why, but sometimes, I felt like I was eavesdropping on intimacy. I think it’s Lorde’s amazing courage, the way she is always confronting the world even as she loves it or fears it or is wearied by it. Some of her poems are terribly human, but all of them are also transcendent.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and true....

[S.G. Huerta · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Inheritance— His” is one of my all-time favorite poems. Such a powerful collection

[kathe · Rating 5 out of 5]

My personal favorites: Making love to concrete, Dear Joe, Lunar eclipse, Girlfriend, and For Craig.
This is a marvelous collection indeed

[Mars G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very picky when it comes to poetry and this hit the mark. It was a short, enjoyable read. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys Audre Lorde's other work, or any black feminist theory and art.

[Rob GQ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this at a 2 but I really dislike poetry so that wouldn't be fair.

[yk]

“how hard it is to sleep / in the middle of life.”

sparse, lyrical, and diverse— each one was like a little story you’d spend a week trying to parse.

[L]

Echoes, pg 7
Thaw, pg 10
Syraccuse Airport, pg 22
Lunar Eclipse, pg 55
The Electric Slide Boogie, pg 60

[Ashley Blackburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lunar Eclipse and Change were my two favorite pieces

[Seth Shimelfarb-Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Today is not the day” is one of the greatest poems I’ve ever read. Lorde’s writing as she stares death straight in the face is chilling.