Diving into Audre Lordeis "Blackstudies"

The subject matter of Audre Lorde's poetry is wide-ranging, while her poetry is sometimes deceptively simple. Complexity swaddled in a plain covering, it often contains densely packed, overlaid images and oracular pronouncements, her voice persuasively incantatory, as her message enters sideways, coded and indirect, whispering in your ears and echoing in your head. "Blackstudies" (1974b) is one such poem.1 It speaks on such multivocal and polyphonous levels that each time we return to it, we find ourselves glimpsing a different side of an idea or catching the wisp of an image floating into our consciousness from another direction. Written in 1973 and published in 1974, "Blackstudies" is one of Lorde's most significant creations because here, more than in any other poem, she exposes poignantly her terror, pain, and vulnerability in ways that were unusual for the "woman warrior," a persona Lorde had already begun to adopt by the time the feminist world was making her acquaintance. Yet the feelings, which hold her nearly immobilized, are undergirded with the understanding that beyond her fear is a broader and deeper vision of connectedness with all kinds of different people that she has charged herself with conveying to these young people. The reader, then, accepts her truths and encourages her efforts to overcome her psychic nightmares and fulfill her responsibilities to her students. We accompany her into the Black Studies meetings, where she stumbles "awkward(ly)," and, understanding her mollifying yet useless tactics, we bear witness. And we sit mute and helpless at her bedside as she battles nightmare demons and