The "Power" and "Sequelae" of Audre Lorde's Syntactical Strategies

Essayist, memoir-writer, university professor--Audre Lorde, in describing her work to Adrienne Rich, stated plainly: "I write poetry." Yet in the relatively small body of literature about her work (no full-length book exists), only a fraction focuses on her poetry. And even this criticism tends to treat her poetry as if it were prose. That is, it looks at content without taking into account formal structures. Such works paraphrase her poems and smooth over difficult syntax in order to reveal their true "meaning" or underlying "message." But to ignore the ways in which Lorde disrupts traditional syntax is to ignore the very premise of her poetic project. By examining "Power" and "Sequelae," two poems from The Black Unicorn, this article argues that Lorde's innovative use of syntax has a pointed objective: that of complicating the subject position, undermining monolithic categories of identity, and demonstrating that difference is not only consistent with creativity, but constitutive of it. It is only by considering how formal structures complement, dramatize, and produce meaning that we can truly approach an understanding of Lorde's poetry, which, for too long, has been overlooked or misread.