Audre Lorde: Poetry Literary Elements

The poems are presented from a first person subjective point of view.

Because the collection is composed of modernist poetry, there is no form and meter.

In the poem Father Son and Holy Ghost, the author uses the term dust as a metaphor for death. She talks about dust in relationship with her dead father and also to suggest that she will not see him again unless she is dead.

We find alliteration in the line ‘flameproofed free-pape’.

In the poem entitled For Each of you. The narrator claims that ironically, in order to learn how to love a person first needs to learn how to hate and only then that person will truly know the meaning of love and will know what it means to love someone completely.

Elegies

For most of the poems, no setting is given as the author talks and analyzes a plethora of social matters rather than presenting narratives with characters.

Tragic, remorseful, violent

In many of the poems, the protagonists are the black people and the antagonists are the white people.

In most of the poems, the major conflict is produces by the racial differences and tensions that existed in the society where the author lived.

Because most the poems are elegies, there is no climactic moment.

In the poem I have not seen my father’s grave, the first line foreshadows the feelings of guilt the narrator experiences as a result of not visiting her father’s grave.

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When the author talks about being an offspring of slaves and that her mother was a princess in the darkness she alluded that she suffered as a result of being dark skinned and suggested that she suffered because of it.

The term ‘gods’ is used in a general sense to make reference to a person’s morality and their belief system.

We find personification in the line ‘examine the heart of those machines’.

We find a hyperbole in the line ‘your mother was/a princess/in darkness.’

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