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From a Land Where Other People Live
Lorde's third book of poems (1973).
46 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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About the author
Audre Lorde
112 books5,465 followersAudre 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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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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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 15, 2022
Hear
the old ways are going away
and coming back pretending change
masked as denunciation and lament
masked as a choice
between eager mirrors that blur and distort
us in easy definitions
until our image
shatters along its fault
while the other half of that choice
speaks to our hidden fears with promise
that our eyes need not seek any truer shape-
a face at high noon particular and unadorned-
for we have learned to fear
the light from clear water might destroy us
with reflected emptiness or a face without tongue
with no love or with terrible penalties
for any difference
the old ways are going away
and coming back pretending change
masked as denunciation and lament
masked as a choice
between eager mirrors that blur and distort
us in easy definitions
until our image
shatters along its fault
while the other half of that choice
speaks to our hidden fears with promise
that our eyes need not seek any truer shape-
a face at high noon particular and unadorned-
for we have learned to fear
the light from clear water might destroy us
with reflected emptiness or a face without tongue
with no love or with terrible penalties
for any difference
August 24, 2015
A Song of Names and Faces
I walk across noon with you today
knowing you for a mistake in my blood
calling you with yesterday's voice
and you are wise to forget the rules
of yesterday's game. But creepers tickle
out elbows as we circle the park
and tomorrow
the little red gourds hung on the cusp
of the moon of cherries blackening
will rattle a winter's song.
I cannon record the face you wear
in this afternoon
because I have not judged myself.
We shall walk as far as we can
until we tire
hoping
there will be someone
to amuse each of us
on the way back home.
I always forget how the year began
by the time midsummer comes on me.
We first met at noontime
during the moon of snowblindness
Shall I call you today's name tomorrow
or forget you exist at all?
I walk across noon with you today
knowing you for a mistake in my blood
calling you with yesterday's voice
and you are wise to forget the rules
of yesterday's game. But creepers tickle
out elbows as we circle the park
and tomorrow
the little red gourds hung on the cusp
of the moon of cherries blackening
will rattle a winter's song.
I cannon record the face you wear
in this afternoon
because I have not judged myself.
We shall walk as far as we can
until we tire
hoping
there will be someone
to amuse each of us
on the way back home.
I always forget how the year began
by the time midsummer comes on me.
We first met at noontime
during the moon of snowblindness
Shall I call you today's name tomorrow
or forget you exist at all?
August 2, 2022
Started the month long Sealey Challenge with the revered Audre Lorde. In this collection, Lorde writes about many things including motherhood and human rights. The endings of the poems in this collection are jolting. She takes the reader along one path with the poems and then ends the poems with a visual, question or phrase that leaves the reader contemplating and wanting to read the poems over again.
December 29, 2020
this collection has stuck out to me the most so far as I make my way through Lorde's collected works. I mostly loved: "For Each of You", "The Seventh Sense", "Love, Maybe", "Who Said It Was Simple", "Dear Toni..."
January 21, 2018
She voices the feelings that are so often hard for me to express.
August 8, 2024
“which me will survive
all these liberations.”
::
poems for our time i fear, living through many terrors, to be becoming ourselves at a time of global cataclysm and moving in and out of cooperative living situations,, the relatability scares me
::
“Do not let your head deny
your hands
any memory of what passes through them”
“Am I cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?”
all these liberations.”
::
poems for our time i fear, living through many terrors, to be becoming ourselves at a time of global cataclysm and moving in and out of cooperative living situations,, the relatability scares me
::
“Do not let your head deny
your hands
any memory of what passes through them”
“Am I cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?”
January 22, 2021
“Women
who build nations
learn
to love
men
who build nations
learn
to love
children
building sand castles
by the rising sea.”
who build nations
learn
to love
men
who build nations
learn
to love
children
building sand castles
by the rising sea.”
December 8, 2022
*****
What you took for granted once
you now refuse to take at all
*****
It is a waste of time hating a mirror
or its reflection
instead of stopping the hand
that makes glass with distortions
*****
Black Mother Woman
I cannot recall you gentle
yet through your heavy love
I have become
an image of your once delicate flesh
split with deceitful longings.
When strangers come and compliment me
your aged spirit takes a bow
jingling with pride
but once you hid that secret
in the center of furies
hanging me
with deep breasts and wiry hair
with your own split flesh
and long suffering eyes
buried in myths of little worth.
But I have peeled away your anger
down to the core of love
and look mother
I Am
a dark temple where your true spirit rises
beautiful
and tough as chestnut
stanchion against your nightmare of weakness
and if my eyes conceal
a squadron of conflicting rebellions
I learned from you
to define myself
through your denials.
*****
I am trapped in
the intensities of my own (our) situation
where what we need and do not have
deadens us
and promises sound like destruction
white snowflakes clog the passages
drifting through the halls and corridors
while I tell stories with no ending
at lunchtime
*****
Neighbors for D. D.
We made strong poems for each other
exchanging formulas for our own particular magic
all the time pretending
we were not really witches
and each time we would miss
some small ingredient
that one last detail
that would make the spell work
Each one of us
too busy
hearing our other voices
the sound of our own guards
calling the watch at midnight
assuring us
we were still safely asleep
so when it came time to practice
what we had learned
one grain was always missing
one word unsaid
so the pot did not boil
the sweet milk would curdle
or the bright wound went on bleeding
and each of us would go back
to her own particular magic
confirmed
believing
she was always alone
believing
the other was always
lying
in wait.
December 8, 2024
The Land Where Other People Live by Audre Lorde was published in 1973 and the poems were written earlier. She contemplates what it means to be a black woman in the land dominated by white people.
The poem about the Orishas has a few lines about Tiresias and how it took him “500 years to progress into woman.” And also discusses the drudgery of working people, men mostly. Meanwhile the weather and oceans continue moving.
Another poem cautions Toni Cade Bambara about raising her daughter “to be a correct little sister.” Let “our girls [will] grow into their own Black Women.” And the book holds much about life then, in those early 1070s: “Moving Out or the End of Cooperative Living” is the title of one poem. “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” six black children died in a fire at a day care center in the same city on the same day. Other themes are her mother, her lovers, her teaching life.
It’s a beautiful book with Audre Lorde coming into her voice. I am reading her poems as I read her biography written by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in a very nontraditional way—Survival is a Promise, a great book.
The poem about the Orishas has a few lines about Tiresias and how it took him “500 years to progress into woman.” And also discusses the drudgery of working people, men mostly. Meanwhile the weather and oceans continue moving.
Another poem cautions Toni Cade Bambara about raising her daughter “to be a correct little sister.” Let “our girls [will] grow into their own Black Women.” And the book holds much about life then, in those early 1070s: “Moving Out or the End of Cooperative Living” is the title of one poem. “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” six black children died in a fire at a day care center in the same city on the same day. Other themes are her mother, her lovers, her teaching life.
It’s a beautiful book with Audre Lorde coming into her voice. I am reading her poems as I read her biography written by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in a very nontraditional way—Survival is a Promise, a great book.
May 8, 2017
This one felt a little uneven to me, and I definitely enjoyed the first half more than I did the second half, but I feel like it's on par emotionally with Lorde's first book of poetry, and there were a lot of poems in this collection that I really loved: For Each of You; The Day They Eulogized Mahalia; Progress Report; Black Mother Woman; As I Grow Up Again; Teacher; Moving Out, or The End of Cooperative Living; Neighbors; Change of Season; A Song of Names and Faces...
On to The New York Head Shop and Museum.
On to The New York Head Shop and Museum.
December 18, 2024
I liked this collection even more than Lorde’s first two--so, so many excellent pieces in here, especially (for me) the ones that talk about schools and teachers and show personal connections between Lorde and other important Black women of the time (Mahalia Jackson, Toni Morrison).
I started listing the ones that spoke most to me, and found I was listing most of the pieces in the book: “Equinox,” “For Each of You,” “As I Grow Up Again,” “New Year’s Day,” “Conclusion,” “Who Said It Was Simple,” “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia,” “Progress Report,” “Teacher,” “Generation II,” “Dear Toni,” “Prologue,” “Movement Song.” So many. Go read it!
I started listing the ones that spoke most to me, and found I was listing most of the pieces in the book: “Equinox,” “For Each of You,” “As I Grow Up Again,” “New Year’s Day,” “Conclusion,” “Who Said It Was Simple,” “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia,” “Progress Report,” “Teacher,” “Generation II,” “Dear Toni,” “Prologue,” “Movement Song.” So many. Go read it!
August 29, 2025
“but do not be misled by details
simply because you live them.”
“Examine the heart of those machines you hate
Before you discard them”
“If you do not learn to hate
You will never be lonely
Enough
To love easily”
“Each time you love
Love as deeply
As if it were
Forever
Only nothing is
Eternal.”
“Because death was becoming such an excellent
measure
Of prophecy”
“I learned from you
To define myself
Through your denials”
“There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear”
December 25, 2019
Really liked New Year’s Day (for its meditation on change, the big questions and the minute details), Moving Out (for its dark structural commentary), Neighbors (for its simple recipe of bad timing in love), Change of Season (for its nostalgia), A Song of Names and Faces (just wow)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
June 22, 2021
Somewhere in the landscape past noon
I shall leave a dark print
of the me that I am
and who I am not
etched in a shadow of angry and remembered loving
and their ghosts will move
whispering through them
with me none the wiser
for they will have buried me
either in shame
or in peace.
And the grasses will still be
Singing.
January 3, 2020
"I know beyond fear and history
that our teaching means keeping trust
with less and less correctness
only with ourselves -
History may alter
old pretenses and victories
but not the pain my sister never the pain."
that our teaching means keeping trust
with less and less correctness
only with ourselves -
History may alter
old pretenses and victories
but not the pain my sister never the pain."
May 7, 2021
Definitely can see her maturing as a Poet in this one and yet she is still raw, authentic, and writes about the every day life as she experiences it. My favorite from this collection was “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” but that’s probably the history buff in me.
May 5, 2019
This was beautiful... Audre Lorde had so much talent.
December 15, 2020
“Moving out or the end of cooperative living” was my favorite poem and this collection hit me the hardest of all I’ve read from Audre Lorde so far.
July 25, 2021
3/5: Good Mirrors are Not Cheap, The Seventh Sense, Conclusion
5/5: The Winds of the Orishas
5/5: The Winds of the Orishas
November 11, 2021
This one is pretty close to being my favorite collection by Audre Lorde. Might be up there with "The Black Unicorn"
February 13, 2025
they just KEEP getting better!
“remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest.”
“remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest.”
February 8, 2016
Somewhere between a 3 and 3.5. Some of the poems were quite strong and heartbreaking, but I felt the collection as a whole lacked some coherence. Obviously worth reading, but I don't think it'll be the best collection I'll read by Audre Lorde.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews