Cables to Rage

by Audre Lorde

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Queer, LGBT

28 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1970

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

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turns out, Audre Lorde was the original “Girl on Fire,” long before Alicia Keys ever dreamed up those lyrics.

Oh—but she was definitely a woman, not a girl.

A woman who declared her Voice and wasn't backing down from who she was:

All the poems I have ever written
make a small book
the shedding of my past in patched conceits
moulted like snake skin, a book of leavings

now
I can do anything I wish
I can love them or hate them
use them for comfort or warmth
tissues or decoration
dolls or japanese baskets
blankets or spells;
I can use them for magic
advice or small council
for napkins or past-times or
disposable diapers
I can make fire from them
or kindling
songs or paper chains

Or fold them all into a paper fan
with which to cool my husband's dinner.

I hope you read the humor in the couplet at the end. That's how she writes: bold, sensual, funny.

I read all of these aloud, and, if you ever choose to read them yourself, I'd suggest the same. These are not poems to be read in your mind in a quiet library.

Wow—I'm not sure I've ever encountered a collection of poems that was erotic because of self-empowerment.

I mean. . . some of these are just flat-out erotic:

And I would be the moon
spoken over your beckoning flesh
breaking against reservations
beaching thought
my hands at your hide tide
over and under inside you
and the passing of hungers
attended, forgotten.

Darkly risen
the moon speaks
my eyes
judging your roundness
delightful.

But most of them are sensual and erotic because she was a person who owned who she was and became comfortable in her own skin (something she referred to as “my own business minding").

Evel Knievel wasn't the only daredevil in the 1970s, y'all.

[Magali · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poem about Martha broke me, I read it twice in a row, and I'll probably go back to it in a few days. The other poems were beautiful and I loved them too.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The erotic poem about planting tomatoes is everything to me.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second book by an important poet warrior who played/plays a central role in defining "identity" as a complex network of race, gender, sexuality, class, parenthood, perspective. Lorde hasn't yet started the immersion in African mythology that emerges in some of her later work, but the intensity of personal engagement and social perspective is already firmly in place.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Now the image is fire
blackening the vague lines
into defiance across the city.
The image is fire
sun warming us in a cold country
barren of symbols for love.

Now I have forsaken order
and imagine you into fire
untouchable in a magician's coat
covered with signs of destruction and birth
sewn with griffins and arrows and hammers
and gold sixes stitched into your hem
your fingers draw fire
but still the old warlocks shun you
for no gourds ring in your sack
no spells bring forth peace
and I am still fruitless and hungry
this summer
the peaches are flinty and juiceless
and cry sour worms."

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love this second book of Audre Lorde's nearly as much as her first; really only a couple of the poems in this collection particularly stood out to me, at least on first reading--Martha and Conversation in crisis. But I'm definitely still enjoying working my way through all of her stuff, and look forward to Audre Lorde poetry book number three!

[ava ౨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Their fathers are dying
Whose deaths will not free them
Of growing from knowledge
Of knowing
When the game becomes foolish
A dangerous pleading
For time out of power”

“The image is fire
Sun warming us in a cold country
Barren of symbols for love”

“Strip our loving of dream
Pay its secrets to thunder
And ransom me home”

“They will fill my limp skin
With wild dreams from their root
And grow from my flesh
New handfuls of hate”

“And the morning speaks out
In a thin voice of wisdom
That loves me too late”

“Up or out
Holding or bring forth
Child or demon
Is this birth or exorcism or
The beginning machinery of myself”

“Paper is neither kind nor cruel
Only white in its neutrality”

“I have ejected them not unlike children
Now my throat is clear
Perhaps I shall speak again”

“With each breath the skin of your face moved
Falling in like crumpled muslin”

“No one can fault you Martha
For answering necessity too well”

“They said
no hope no dreaming
Accept this case of flesh as evidence
Of life without fire
And wrapped you in an electric blanket
Kept ten degrees below life”

“Asking
In a smash of mixed symbols
How long must I wonder here
In this final house of my father?”

[Adam Carrico · Rating 4 out of 5]

“and the gods who honor hard work will keep this second coming free from that lack of choice which hindered your first journey to this Tarot house.”

Really liked “Bloodbirth,” “After a first book,” and “A poem for a poet.” LOVED “Martha.”

[Sunday · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few poems stuck with me, but not nearly as many or as deeply as Lorde's first collection. My favorites were After a first book, The woman thing, A poem for a poet, and Conversation in crisis, but honestly I feel pretty mild about the whole collection. It felt uninspired and lacking depth.

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are hung up
in giving
what we wish to be given
ourselves."

3.5 stars

[Lilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Song' and 'Making It'

[M_P_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Towards the end, this collection absoluetly delivered some incredible stuff!
Favorite poems in "Cables to Rage" are:
"After a first book"
"The Dozens"
"Sowing"
"Making it"

[Amanda Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read from her complete collection of poems. Martha was definitely my favorite of this collection.

[Esther Grace]

Song
Rooming houses are old women
Bloodbirth
After a first book
Martha
A poem for a poet
Conversation in crisis
Sowing
Making it
On a night of the full moon

[Rolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lorde’s second poetry collection, and it has some incredible pieces in it. Favorites of mine include “Martha,” “Now that I Am Forever with Child,” and “Rooming Houses Are Old Women.”

[Hannah - RedHotReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars!!

“We are hung up
in giving
what we wish to be given
ourselves”

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favourites: "song", "spring people", "conversation in crisis", "on a night of the full moon"

[Aseel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conversation in crisis
I speak to you as a friend speaks
or a true lover
not out of friendship or love
but for a clear meeting
of self upon self
in sight of our hearth
but without fire.
I cherish your words that ring
like late summer thunders
to sing without octave
and fade, having spoken the season.
But I hear the false heat of this voice
as it dries up the sides of your words
coaxing melodies from your tongue
and this curled music is treason.
Must I die in your fever—
or, as the flames wax, take cover
in your heart’s culverts
crouched like a stranger
under the scorched leaves of your other burnt loves
until the storm passes over?

[joanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such beautiful poems, beautiful words!

I'm currently working on/writing my MA thesis based on Audre Lorde's sapphic poems, 'The reception of sapphic poetry in french-speaking countries with the example of Audre Lorde's works'; and I find her sapphic poetry beautiful, truly!! It feels so nice to read poetry about women loving women, women in love sharing a special moment, making love etc. Thank you Audre Lorde for writing a positive representation of woman sexuality and sapphic sex.

My favourite poems: "On a night of the full moon", "after a first book" and of course "Martha."

[Breanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, didn't love it as much as the first