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Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

Audre Lorde

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Audre Lorde
Age: 58 †
Born: 1934
Born: February 18
Died: 1992
Died: November 17
Essayist
Feminist
Librarian
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Audre Geraldine Lorde
Helping
Experiences
Carved
Thought
Rock
Horizons
Give
Rocks
Nameless
Giving
Poetry
Poems
Way
Name
Horizon
Names
Hopes
Help
Fears
Cobbled
Lives
Daily
Farthest

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The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .
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Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
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I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
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Without community, there is no liberation.
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
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Guilt is not a response to anger it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
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So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
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All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
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It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.
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Poetry is not a luxury.
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It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
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Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
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I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.
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Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
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The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
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. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
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