Summary
Lorde begins this short essay with a symbolic comparison between poetry and light. The "quality of light through which we scrutinize our lives" has an enormous effect both on how we experience our lives and how we alter them. Light, here, is a metaphorical representation of poetry, which also has the power to illuminate, shift perception, and make change possible. Poetry, in fact, is an essential source of thoughts, just as feelings are an essential source of ideas. One cannot exist, or at least cannot flourish, without the other. Moreover, while the scrutinizing effect that comes with light (and poetry) can feel overwhelming at first, it ultimately makes one's fears diminish, so that they lose the ability to control the fearful person's thoughts and actions. In other words, putting feeling into words makes it easier to live with those feelings. Here, Lorde explicitly connects womanhood to poetry. Women have within themselves a (symbolic) place of darkness, strength, and power. This place breeds emotion and poetry, and, while it cannot be seen, its powers can be harnessed.
Next, Lorde posits that the European tradition views life as a "problem to be solved." According to this point of view, poetry is not useful: only rational concepts are useful, since they can help solve the problems inherent in being alive. Lorde identifies symbolic "White Fathers" as the proponents of this incomplete worldview. It is important to access the "non-european consciousness," which approaches life as an experience rather than a mere puzzle to be solved. Doing this involves harnessing the dark, mysterious places within ourselves: the places from which poetry comes. In doing so, we can set ourselves free. Therefore, it is the job of women specifically (since women possess the internal "place of power") to meld the European and pre-European attitudes, combining the power of feeling and that of ideas through poetry. At this point, Lorde finds it necessary to clarify her definitions. The term "poetry" has, in the European tradition, been associated with frivolity and considered a mere game. In truth, though, poetry has the capacity to reveal and change the world around it, making it anything but frivolous. Therefore, for women, poetry is the source of all political, social, and personal change.
Through poetry, people are made familiar with their own feelings, even those that might frighten them. In fact, Lorde herself recalls several occasions on which feelings came to her through poetry or dreams, making them feel more manageable than they would be had they occurred in another context or medium. These feelings, especially those that cause alarm with their strangeness or newness, are the first step to radical change in the outside world. Poetry, which does the work of turning deep-seated feelings into shareable ideas, is "the skeleton architecture of our lives." Poetry, of course, isn't easy. For one thing, like women themselves, it's often dismissed for being childish or inessential. For another, even if you manage to spur people to action, that's not the same as causing lasting change in their orientation towards the world. Both are worthy goals, but the former is mostly meaningful as part of the latter. Here, Lorde draws a contrast between René Descartes' famous philosophical axiom, "I think, therefore I am," and the metaphorical "Black Mother's" ideal, "I feel, therefore I can be free." Mere thought, she suggests, leads only to the maintenance of the status quo, whereas poetry leads to freedom from it.
To create the lasting but immediate change that is necessary for survival, people—specifically women—must be open to the new and the radical. Yet no ideas are truly radical. Every idea has been invented and expressed many times over. What is new, though, are the infinite possible emotional conditions in which those ideas can be considered. Through the light of different feelings, ideas are made radical again.
Analysis
This essay is a short one, but it is so densely packed with insights and associations that it rewards careful reading and re-reading. Lorde stitches together ideas in this essay through metaphors, unifying distinct concepts so swiftly that a casual reader might not consciously register all of the connections she draws. For instance, Lorde creates a distinction between feelings and ideas. Rather than operate under the assumption that feeling is primarily at odds with logic, she implies that feelings are deeply logical and can offer solutions if they are given space to thrive. Instead, the main point of difference between feelings and ideas is that feelings occur internally, often in a deep, unreachable spot, while ideas aim to communicate and correct external problems. In this way, while they are different, they are not opposed, Lorde insists. Feelings are the source of meaningful ideas; ideas are a realization of feeling.
Through metaphor, Lorde assigns certain symbols and attributes to feeling and others to ideas. Blackness, woman-ness, nature, and internal strength are all associated with feeling. For this reason a "Black Mother" is the figure who helps individuals recognize and grapple with their feelings. Maleness, whiteness, and artificiality are associated with pure idea, divested of feeling. Therefore "White Fathers" are the champions of idea-driven thinking. This parental metaphor is an interesting one: mothers and fathers are not necessarily opposed, and in fact are generally considered halves of a whole, creating a new generation. Therefore, this metaphor implies that feelings are not superior to ideas. Rather, they are inextricable and equal. However, Lorde certainly speaks about feelings (and their associated qualities) more warmly, possibly because, like Blackness and femaleness, they have been so long devalued. In general, Lorde's affinity for metaphorical language in this essay speaks to an intellectual and philosophical insistence upon wholeness and interconnectedness. Metaphors take two unlike things and insist upon their intrinsic relatedness. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Lorde would rely heavily upon figurative language in an essay about the natural relatedness and equality of feelings and ideas.
Finally, at the end of this densely packed and heady piece of writing, Lorde gives readers a glimpse of the physical world. In order to showcase the variety of emotional contexts in which people might re-experience old ideas, Lorde lists some of these contexts ("after brunch, during wild love, making war..."), sprinkling her final paragraph with images or miniature scenes. These vivid, tiny flashes actually remind readers of the potential evocativeness and rejuvenating power of literary language, helping to quietly prove Lorde's point as the essay concludes.
