“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

— Audre Lorde

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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Audre Lorde 72

writer and activist 1934–1992

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“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
Context: Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
Context: For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

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Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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