In the beginning, when we were still disovering similar interests and different ideas in each other, TW and I found ourselves in the midst of what I like to call a poetry dance. The "music" we were dancing to was the poetry of Audre Lorde. On a message board, in a community of women, there were few who recognized Lorde’s words and even fewer who understood what Lorde’s words meant to us. Typical and disappointing. Finding TW in that place and finding that she not only knew of Audre Lorde but appreciated her was neither typical or disappointing. It was pretty darn amazing.
I’ve mentioned my birthday gifts on the other blog; iRiver and clean sweep but now I’m going to tell you about the best gift of all! (I know, how could it get better than that?)
TW adopted Audre Lorde for me! It’s true, she did! You can go right to this Audre Lorde page of the Poets.org site and look way down there on the right. My name is there (along with some other obvoiusly cool woman in NYC).
A lot of time has passed since then and we’ve shared a lot of poetry since then but Audre Lorde will always be special to us both. For who she was, what she said and the poetry dance the two of us shared.
audre lorde, poetry, feminism, women, GLBT, african american
That is a cool gift.
I just can’t get into poetry. I’ve tried. It just doesn’t happen. Maybe I just haven’t found my poet?
Maybe not. How about listening to poets recite their work? Does that help?
You mean like at a poetry reading? Ummm not any that I’ve heard.
I think it’s because I used to like poetry. I took it at face value and I enjoyed it. Then various english teachers told me that was wrong and it ruined all my fun and I was never good at analyzing the stuff. I stopped writing it about then too. Since then…meh.