Analysis Of The Poem Power By Audre Lorde

In the poem “Power” written by Audre Lorde, she drew a picture based on an actual event and her’s personal reaction, which she recorded in her journal. While her driving, Lorde heard a radio broadcast announcing that a white policeman who had shot and killed a black ten years old. She was so furious and shocked. And the writer felt that the sky turned red, that she had to park the car before she drove it into a wall. Then and there, she inscribed her feelings of outrage over the decision of the jury of eleven white men and one black woman. Through this poem, she tries to “make power out of hatred and destruction,” to heal her “dying soon with kisses.” Yet she cannot help expressing her rage at the policeman’s comment, offered in his own defense, that “I didn’t notice the size or nothing else/only the color.”

She shares her outrage and disgust at a racist society that can allow a child's death to be buried with no true justice found to help resolve the loss of an innocent child. Which pictures we can see in our society now. It is this experience as mothers and highly intelligent feminists that allow us to feel the unconditional caring towards humanity she is encouraging in her poem. "The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children"(1-5), she immediately stresses the importance of putting your child before yourself. This is a metaphor for putting the needs of what is truly important before the needs of