Word: undersong
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hurricane-inspired and filled with love, pain and history, Audre Lorde's last book of passionate verse underscores why her strong voice will continue to reverberate into the decade and beyond. Undersong contains revised versions of most of the pieces from Chosen Poems, a 1982 collection, as well as nine new poems. This new book serves as a testament to Lorde's role as both a revolutionary spirit and an accomplished artist...
Lorde's poems on Blackness and womanhood as well as the specific references to historical events places Undersong not only within the context of Lorde's full life but within the greater context of America over the last thirty years. The book's final poem, entitled "Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices" takes the form of a dialogue between the poet and two Black women beaten to death in two American cities in the late seventies. The poet's closing words are "How much of this truth can I bear/ to see/ and still live/ unblinded?/ How much...
...word "blood" appears in many poems in all four of the sections into which Undersong is divided and creates a link between the violence she depicts and her emphasis on birth and children. Children continually appear, especially in the later poems, as pupils whom the poet-teacher Lorde instructs. They reinforce the image of the woman-mother as a central and strong figure. In one poem "Dear Toni Instead of a Letter of Congratulation Upon Your Book and Your Daughter Whom You Say You Are Raising to be a Correct Little Sister," Lorde, as mother-teacher-writer, addresses another mother...
...uplifting anger, the emphasis on Black woman-mother, the perseverance of love; these concerns unify Undersong so that it can be read straight through as one whole, as a testament to a life's work and the wisdom and experience necessary to be able to alter that work slightly. As Lorde writes in her poem "Conclusion", "I believe in love as I believe in our children/ but I was born Black and without illusion/ and my vision/ which differs from yours/ is clear/ although sometimes restricted...
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