February 21st, 2011 / 6:00 pm
 Snippets
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“… poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action …” — (from Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” an essay Carolyn Zaikowski showed me during discussion of Sandra Simonds’s “Poor Poetry Mothers” which Roxane posted earlier).

9 Comments

  1. February 21st, 2011 / 10:04 pm Daniel Lichtenberg—

      While I want to believe this, I cannot believe this, based on my experiences and abundant knowledge suggesting otherwise.

  2. February 21st, 2011 / 10:11 pm Mike Young—

      you should read the whole essay; the meaning of “luxury” and the definition of “light” as a metaphor doesn’t really come across in the pull-quote-as-provocation

  3. February 21st, 2011 / 10:39 pm Dreezer—

      It would be pretty to think so.

  4. February 21st, 2011 / 10:49 pm Ssimonds23—

      Mike, thank you for posting this.

  5. February 21st, 2011 / 11:08 pm Mike Young—

      thanks for your blog-essay! it was great

  6. February 21st, 2011 / 11:08 pm Mike Young—

      you should read the whole essay; the meaning of “luxury” and the definition of “light” as a metaphor doesn’t really come across in the pull-quote-as-provocation

  7. February 22nd, 2011 / 1:14 am Joseph Young—

      haven’t read it yet, i will, but i think even in pull quote it is clearly so. why do we spend these million countless hours making this stuff, poetry art whatever? there is some vital, necessary benefit.

  8. February 22nd, 2011 / 2:38 am jackie wang—

      i love this essay, and the other essays from Sister Outsider. used them quite a bit in my thesis on writing.

  9. February 22nd, 2011 / 2:43 am deadgod—

      My heart rouses
      …..thinking to bring you news
      ……….of something
      that concerns you
      …..and concerns many men. Look at
      ……….what passes for the news.
      You will not find it there but in
      …..despised poems.
      ……….It is difficult
      to get the news from poems
      …..yet men die miserably every day
      ……….for lack
      of what is found there.

      -Williams, Asphodel