{"id":302,"date":"2018-12-12T05:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=302"},"modified":"2018-12-14T13:30:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T18:30:25","slug":"after-a-first-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/marr\/after-a-first-book\/","title":{"rendered":"“After a first book”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n
Paper is neither kind nor cruel\r\n only white in its neutrality\r\n and I have for reality now\r\n the brown bar of my arm\r\n moving in broken rhythms\r\n across this dead place.\r\n\r\nAll the poems I have ever written\r\n are historical reviews of a now absorbed country\r\n a small judgement\r\n hawking and coughing them up\r\n I have ejected them not unlike children\r\n now my throat is clear\r\n perhaps I shall speak again.\r\n\r\nAll the poems I have ever written\r\n make a small book\r\n the shedding of my past in patched conceits\r\n moulted like snake skin, a book of leavings\r\n now\r\n I can do anything I wish\r\n I can love them or hate them\r\n use them for comfort or warmth\r\n tissues or decoration\r\n dolls or Japanese baskets\r\n blankets or spells;\r\n I can use them for magic\r\n lanterns or music\r\n advice or small council\r\n for napkins or past-times or\r\n disposable diapers\r\n I can make fire from them\r\n or kindling\r\n songs or paper chains\r\n\r\nOr fold them all into a paper fan\r\n with which to cool my husband\u2019s dinner.<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cAfter a first book\u201d was published in Lorde\u2019s second poetry chapbook, Cables to Rage, <\/i>in 1970. In this short poem, Lorde describes her connection to the process of producing writing as one of intense necessity. She expresses the agency and freedom she feels once her poems have been composed and collected. Once they have been externalized–\u201cmoulted like snake skin\u201d as she puts it–she asserts, \u201cI can do anything I wish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linguistically \u201cAfter a first book\u201d is a manifestation of Lorde\u2019s views on the inseparability of identity. As evidenced by the title, in this piece, Lorde, first and foremost, directly addresses her identity as a writer. The initial word of the poem is \u201cpaper\u201d and the work is full of other blatant references to writing. This reality is most obviously demonstrated by the repeated line, \u201cAll the poems I have ever written.\u201d Despite this pronounced focus, however, Lorde is compelled to reference other aspects of her identity. In the first stanza, through references to \u201cwhite\u201d paper and \u201cthe brown bar of my arm,\u201d Lorde incorporates race into the image she paints of her experience of being a poet. Similarly, in the second stanza, she integrates her status as a mother, writing of her poems, \u201cI have ejected them not unlike children.\u201d Lastly, in the final line of the piece, Lorde makes a critical, powerful reference to her \u201chusband\u2019s dinner,\u201d* marking her status as a woman as fundamental to the piece. This final punch gives the poem relevance by revealing Lorde\u2019s feeling that her creativity is muddled by society\u2019s expectations of her as a wife, a mother, and a black woman.<\/p>\n
Once again, in \u201cAfter a first book\u201d Lorde stresses the innate connectivity of the aspects of the self and the power of social labels. This piece exemplifies something Lorde said in a commencement speech she gave at Harvard in 1982: \u201cIf I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.\u201d \u201cAfter a first book\u201d shows that Lorde does not simply talk <\/i>of the need for self-definition but that she does <\/i>it, consistently and visibly, over and over again in her writing.<\/p>\n
*Note that at this time, Lorde was married to Edwin Rollins. They got divorced the same year Cables to Rage <\/i>was published, and it was then that Lorde began openly identifying and writing prolifically about being a lesbian.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/strong> Lorde, Audre. \u201cAfter a first book.\u201d Cables to Rage.<\/em>\u00a01st ed., Paul Breman, 1970.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paper is neither kind nor cruel only white in its neutrality and I have for reality now the brown bar of my arm moving in broken rhythms across this dead place. All the poems I have ever written are historical … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2052,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-marr","post_format-post-format-aside"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2052"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}