Analysis Of The Poem Power By Audre Lorde

In the poem “Power” written by Audre Lorde, she drew a picture based on an actual event and her’s personal reaction, which she recorded in her journal. While her driving, Lorde heard a radio broadcast announcing that a white policeman who had shot and killed a black ten years old. She was so furious and shocked. And the writer felt that the sky turned red, that she had to park the car before she drove it into a wall. Then and there, she inscribed her feelings of outrage over the decision of the jury of eleven white men and one black woman. Through this poem, she tries to “make power out of hatred and destruction,” to heal her “dying soon with kisses.” Yet she cannot help expressing her rage at the policeman’s comment, offered in his own defense, that “I didn’t notice the size or nothing else/only the color.”

She uses her poetic prose to express her feelings of anger and fury over an unfortunate incident which occurred in New York City in the late 1970's.

She shares her outrage and disgust at a racist society that can allow a child's death to be buried with no true justice found to help resolve the loss of an innocent child. Which pictures we can see in our society now. It is this experience as mothers and highly intelligent feminists that allow us to feel the unconditional caring towards humanity she is encouraging in her poem. "The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children"(1-5), she immediately stresses the importance of putting your child before yourself. This is a metaphor for putting the needs of what is truly important before the needs of

her.
The fourth stanza in this poem she talks of the trial of the officer and the jury that granted him an acquittal. The jury made of mostly white men and only one African-American woman. She returns back to the poets feelings about the injustice that the young boy received and her fury over it, in the last stanza of the poem. Lorde try to showed that how racism destroy our society and country. As the way we can say black life matter. She shares her outrage and disgust at a racist society that can allow a child's death to be buried with no true justice found to help resolve the loss of an innocent child. In here her thoughts of what awful acts she might perform if she does not use her own power as an African-American woman. This is a poetic gift to find the difference in “poetry and rhetoric”.
The first stanza appears to be a mission statement that people should not just talk about something but do something instead and that something is putting our children first. Lorde implies that protecting and providing for them the best that one can should be a priority that is acted on, not just talked about. Speaking about putting them first and doing it are two very different things as are "poetry and rhetoric." Poetry is metrical composition in verse that uses figurative language, symbols, and metaphors to help express aspects of internal and external realities in some meaningful way. The key is the meaningful way. The Lorde, as well as all artists, want to be heard and seen because they feel they have a meaningful point to be made, whatever the point may be.
In the poem her voice is meditative and homiletic, rising to a moral pitch which, while sometimes troubling to reviewers, is nothing new to American society. She talks about her anger of learning about the officer responsible for Glover's death for acquittal. The overall theme of the poem is Lorde talking about the power that every person possesses. She nicely drew that black peoples have no power in this society. The power that the system has and even the powerlessness that the black community feels during our oppression.