Saturday, October 25, 2014

Power: Rhetoric and Poetry


To express oneself is the greatest form of freedom. To question oneself is the worst. Poetry depicts our rawest emotions buried deep within the bosom of the soul. It frees the mind as the lead of the steady hand releases the anguish intertwined within the beating heart; swirling through the ever flowing veins of crimson. Audre Lorde depicts the foreshadow of events to come. The twelfth jury member, a woman of African descent, “lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children”(Lorde3373). Lorde also makes reference to “being ready to kill yourself instead of your children”(Lorde3372). The single African American woman gave up her voice and smothered herself within the burning coals of oppression. When a mother dies, whether metaphorically or physically, she cannot protect her kin. In giving up her voice, the woman allowed the murderer of a young boy to be set free on the streets with a gun in hand and the power to subjugate the the minority. Her only question was the rhetoric of was he guilty? It’s one thing to succumb to the persecutor, but yet another to give one’s self up in such a way that delivery of an innocent child to enemy is the outcome. 

The introduction sets the pace of the poetic stand. Lorde purposefully brings forth the idea of death instantaneously as she wants the reader to distinguish the difference between “murder” and the real death of a child. Murder is heard in all eras throughout history, yet death, finality, makes it real. It allows the reader to feel. Do you feel Lorde’s depiction is appropriate for the message of “Power?” Does the difference between poetry and rhetoric hold relevance in “Power?”

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