Lorde and Master: Confrontation, Context, and Scholarship for "Power" Anonymous College

In 1973, a 10-year-old African American boy named Clifford Glover was shot and killed by Thomas Shea, a policeman for the NYPD. In the days that followed, riots and protests tore through the surrounding area in Queens. Then, a year later, Shea became the first city policeman to stand trial for a murder committed on duty, but he was acquitted on June 12, 1974 (“New York Policeman” 7). Audre Lorde was in her car when she heard the news; she became possessed by outrage and grief, so much so that she had to stop the car and reach for her journal to release the anger she felt on the page. That poem, “Power,” amasses the devastation and turmoil of the period while blending with Lorde’s most politically charged material from her 1974 book New York Head Shot and Museum. In an interview with poet Adrienne Rich, Lorde said that “Power” had been born out of pure emotion rather than any kind of focus on the “craft” (Rudnitsky 474). Before she was the New York State Poet Laureate, Lorde taught and served as writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, yet the predominant characteristic in Lorde’s work is a raw desire for betterment, while her poetic style sometimes appears fragmented and indicative of a disinterest in adhering to...