The poem Audre Lorde is a deeply emotional reaction to events that the author perceives to be happening a little more commonly than she can handle. The poetry begins with the persona explaining that indeed, such emotions come out of an imagination of the real situation that she has heard, probably through media or even witnessed firsthand but was not part of the action. There is a predominant use of imagery and a strong tone and attitude adopted in Power. The poem is rather reactionary and seems to assume the reader's mood, provokes the reader's emotion to understand the contexts of the speaker's imagination. In fact, Rudnitsky, (2003) suggests that indeed, the poetry is a reaction by the Lorde, to a news report of an acquittal of a police officer of white descent who reportedly killed a ten-year-old boy. The poet uses imagery and imaginative descriptions of a rather tense emotion of the events of the killing of the ten-year-old by a police officer, the possible contexts trying to reason why it is unacceptable even to a listener such as herself.
The structure of the poem is rather similar to a report, or a reaction where the poet artistically uses line breaks to intensify her messages by letting each emotion or perception remain understood independently. The beginning stanza is an opener that keeps the reader prepared for the intense, violent and emotional tone that the poem is about to undertake. "The difference between poetry and rhetoric/ Is being/ Ready to kill,"(1-3) are initial lines which the author takes to justify the persona's perception even before delving into the "crisis" within the poem. Indeed, the lines that follow pursue a rather violent situation that would leave a witness or a victim feeling rather shaken by the turn of events. The persona, however, does indicate that these are pictures of the mind in the second stanza. "face off the edge of my sleep" (8). Nevertheless, the persona shows that the image that is created from what she has witnessed is rather to clear it is past what some may perceive to be a dream and become an actual reality. The author, therefore, has an attitude that suggests that in the real world, similar levels of violence are in fact possible therefore justifying the imagination or thought to be a real-time event.
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The use of imagery indeed draws the line between a rhetoric of past events and an actual poetry when the persona begins to relate her real life with what emerged from the imagination. In the third stanza, the persona says;
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove it. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size nor nothing else
only the color”. And
there are tapes to prove that, too (24-29)
The lines and line breaks of the stanza are a rather precise jump from the dream to the reality of the persona. The rather intense rage over the acquittal of the male, white policeman over a proven crime then ensues with the author suggesting a rather rough experience not only on the part of the victim of the crime but also on the listener. The perception is that the reader should also be an individual with a similar opinion. The persona who takes up the person of Audre Lorde, therefore, justifies herself that she is not misusing her artistic power through an exposition that suggests being rather hostile towards a particular group of people. Owing to the expression of the events that took place during the shoot-out, the author emphasizes that such information was from hard evidence, she feels compelled to do something.
Conclusively, there is a use of imagery and imagination in the poem that is deeply connected to reality. The author is striving to provoke the emotion of the reader who is possibly following news reports such that the latter allusions to news reports such as "raping an 85-year-old white woman" which also forms the antithesis of her argument to be a genuine reaction to the violence going on. Such an outro forms a good thinking point for the reader concerning the author's attitude towards the subject matter of racially instigated violence. The questions are whether the violence is reactionary like the poem or whether they are premeditated but without cause? The prevalent question is the party to blame for the violence.
References
Rudnitsky, L. (2003). The" Power" and" Sequelae" of Audre Lorde's Syntactical Strategies. Callaloo , 26 (2), 473-485.
