#A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde

[sisteroutsiders]

Audre Lorde to her students during a poetry workshop, as shown in A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1996) dir. by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson

[spells4poc]

A Litany for Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995)

[jacobwren]

“I went through a period once when I felt like I was dying. I wasn’t writing any poetry, and I felt that if I couldn’t write I would split. I was recording in my journal, but no poems came. I know now that this period was a transition in my life. The next year, I went back to my journal, and here were these incredible poems that I could almost lift out of it. Many of them are in The Black Unicorn. “Harriet” is one of them; “Sequelae” and “A Litany for Survival” are others. These poems came right out of the journal. But I didn’t see them as poems then.” – Audre Lorde [As quoted in Black Women Writers at Work, edited by Claudia Tate]

[femmepathy]

A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1996) dir. Ada Gay Griffin, Michelle Parkerson

[garadinervi]

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde, (documentary, 52 min), Directed by Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson, Third World Newsreel, 1995

[heavensickness]

if its inconvient though stories/poetry that you enjoy would be great :-)

It would be too long if I put my favorite poems AND poets in the same post so I decided to give the poets whom works I read the most & my favorites from them

Poets

John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale)

Arthur Rimbaud (The Drunken Boat, Comedy of Thirst)

Paul Verlaine (A Poor Young Shepherd)

Emily Dickinson (I Am Nobody! Who Are You?)

Mary Oliver (The Wild Geese, Invitation, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac, October, Moments, Starlings in Winter, Little Crazy Love Song, I Worried, Worm Moon, Black Oaks, We Should Be Well Prepared, In Blackwater Woods, Someday... You know what, read any and every work by her that you can find)

Frank O'Hara (Having a Coke with You, For Grace, After a Party, Steps)

Audre Lorde (Pirouette, A Litany for Survival)

Alice Notley (Songs and Stories of the Ghouls and In The Pines (poetry collections), Love Song, Have Made Earth as the Mirror of Heaven, An Excerpt from In The Pines)

Louise Glück (Averno (poetry collection), Departure, Lament, Persephone the Wanderer, A Myth of Devotion, Sunrise, Marina, A Fable)

e. e. cummings (i carry your heart with me, somewhere i have never travelled gladly beyond, i like my body when it is with your…)

Chen Chen (When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (poetry collection), Self Portrait as So Much Potential, Race to the Tree, Chapter VIII, Poplar Street, Elegy for My Sadness, How I Became Sagacious)

Jeremy Radin (So I Locked Myself Inside A Star for Twenty Years, With These Hands, Sign, A Word)

Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase & Lord of the Butterflies (poetry collections) Asking Too Much, I Sing the Body Electric, Birthday for Jenn, Yellowbird, Your Life)

Mahmoud Darvish (In The Presence of Absence (poetry collection), Sonnet V, Your Night is of Lilac, In Her Absence I Created Her Image)

Ocean Vuong (Night Sky With Exit Wounds (poetry collection) Thanksgiving 2006, Homewrecker, Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong, Threshold, Untitled (Blue, Green, & Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952, Reasons for Staying)

Richard Siken (his entire poem collection of Crush, i've read it at one sitting)

Clementine Von Radics (In A Dream You Saw A Way to Survive (poetry collection) Courtney Love Prays to Oregon, The Grapefruit Poem, It's The Way, Mouthful of Forevers, That Spring Everything Grew Wild and the Rain Came Down Like Punishment, I No Longer Believe Anger Will Save Me, Bitter, Storm, A conversation between / my therapist / and the mouth that sometimes belongs to me, Sweet The Sound)

Ada Limón

Margaret Atwood (Power Politics and Interlunar (poem collections) A Sad Child, There Are Better Ways of Doing This, Eurydice, Night Poem, Eating Snake, Half Hanged Mary)

Ursula K. Le Guin (Looking Back, The Drowned Girl)

Franz Wright (God's Silence (poetry collection), On Earth, The Heaven, Quandary, Clarification, To Her, The Poem, East Boston 1996 Night Walk)

Rainer Maria Rilke (Sonnets to Orpheus (sonnet collection), First Elegy, Second Elegy, Go to The Limits of Your Longing, Evening, Part One IV)

Anne Carson (Tango XXII. Homo Ludens, Apostle Town, The Glass Essay, Plainwater (essay and poetry collection), Autobiography of Red (verse novel), O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love, Stanzas Sexes Seductions, On Hedonism (an excerpt from Plainwater)

[liriostigre]

hey! I wanted to ask what your favorite poetry books are? I have a few but I want to read new and interesting stuff, and I trust your taste :D

hiii ♡

tbh i only started reading poetry collections like,, last year. i'm subscribed to poetryfoundation's newsletter (poem of the day) so i usually just read random poems

anyway, i'm not sure my recs could be considered new (cause i'm gonna start with Mary Oliver ♡) but feel free to message me if you want to know the themes, style, feeling (vibes, if you will) or anything you want to know about these collections. for now, i'm linking my favorite poems in each collection, i hope this helps you choose! ♡

here you go:

Dream Work —Mary Oliver (“Wild Geese.” “Dogfish.”)

Red Bird —Mary Oliver (“Summer Morning.” “Love Sorrow.”)

Blue Horses —Mary Oliver (“To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song.” “Loneliness.” “Little Crazy Love Song.”)

The Wild Iris —Louise Glück (“Sunset.” “Retreating Light.”)

Haruko/Love Poems —June Jordan (“On a New Year’s Eve.” “Mendocino Memory.” “Toward a City That Sings.” *under the cut)

Extracting the Stone of Madness —Alejandra Pizarnik (“Primitive Eyes.” “Summer Goodbyes.” *under the cut)

Ariel —Sylvia Plath (“Tulips.” “The Rival.”)

Prelude to Bruise —Saeed Jones (“Postapocalyptic Heartbeat.” *under the cut)

Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth —Alice Walker (“Coming Back from Seeing Your People.” *under the cut)

I Must Be Living Twice —Eileen Myles (“Edward the Confessor.” *under the cut)

Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth —Warsan Shire (“Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre.”)

The Black Unicorn —Audre Lorde (“Hanging Fire.” “Sister Outsider.”)

Bright Dead Things —Ada Limón (“The Riveter.” “Glow.”)

Night Sky With Exit Wounds —Ocean Vuong (“Thanksgiving 2006.” “Logophobia.”)

Postcolonial Love Poem —Natalie Diaz (“Manhattan Is a Lenape Word.”)

Crush —Richard Siken (“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.”)

Once —Alice Walker (“So We've Come at Last to Freud.”)

“Toward a City That Sings” by June Jordan

Into the topaz the crystalline signals of Manhattan the nightplane lowers my body scintillate with longing to lie positive beside the electric waters of your flesh and I will never tell you the meaning of this poem: Just say, ‘She wrote it and I recognize the reference.’ Please let it go at that. Although it is all the willingness you lend the world as when you picked it up the garbage scattering the cool formalities of Madison Avenue after midnight (where we walked for miles as though we knew the woods well enough to ignore the darkness) although it is all the willingness you lend the world that makes me want to clean up everything in sight (myself included)

for your possible discovery

“Primitive Eyes” by Alejandra Pizarnik

Where fear neither speaks in stories or poems, nor gives shape to terrors or triumphs.

My name, my pronoun — a grey void.

I’m familiar with the full range of fear. I know what it’s like to start singing and to set off slowly through the narrow mountain pass that leads back to the stranger in me, to my own emigrant.

I write to ward off fear and the clawing wind that lodges in my throat.

And in the morning, when you are afraid of finding yourself dead (of there being no more images): the silence of compression, the silence of existence itself. This is how the years fly by. This is how we lost that beautiful animal happiness.

“Summer Goodbyes” by Alejandra Pizarnik

The soft rumor of spreading weeds. The sound of things ruined by the wind. They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists. I would like to be dead, and also to go inside another heart.

“Postapocalyptic Heartbeat” by Saeed Jones

I. Drugged, I dreamed you a plume of ash, great rush of wrecked air through the towns of my stupor. And when the ocean in your blood went toxic, I thought fire was what we needed: serrated light through the skin, grenade in the chest—pulled linchpin. I saw us breathing on the other side of after. But a blackout is not night; orange-bottled dreams are not sleep. II. I was a cross-legged boy in the third lifetime, empire of blocks in my lap while you walked through the door of your silence, hunting knife in one hand, flask in the other. I waited for you until I forgot to breathe, my want turning me colors only tongues of amaryllis could answer for. It owned me, that hunger, tendriled its way into my name for you. III. In a city made of rain each door, a silence; each lock, a mouth, I walked daily through the spit-slick streets, harbingers on my hands in henna: there will be no after Black-and-blue-garbed strangers, they called me Cassandra. (I had such a body then.) Umbrellas in hand, they listened while they unlistened. there will be no no. after

the world will end no.

you are the reason it no. ends

you no. IV. I didn’t exactly mean to survive myself. Half this life I’ve spent falling out of fourth-story windows. Pigeons for hair, wind for feet. Sometimes I sing “Stormy Weather” on the way down. Today, “Strange Fruit.” Each time, strangers find me drawing my own chalk outline on the sidewalk, cursing with a mouth full of iron, furious at my pulse. V. After ruin, after shards of glass like misplaced stars, after dredge, after the black bite of frost:        you are the after, you are the first hour in a life without clocks; the name of whatever falls from the clouds now is you (it is not rain), a song in a dead language, an unlit earth, a coast broken— how was I to know every word was your name?

“Coming Back from Seeing Your People” by Alice Walker

Coming back From seeing your people You were So wonderfully Full Of yourself.

But now You have supped With vampires They have fed Feasted On you.

They arise Bright-eyed Fit.

You alone have lost Not only Your sleep But also Your glow The luster of Affection Heart welcome Your people Sent home With you.

Beloved You must learn To walk alone To hold The precious Silence To bring home And keep the precious Little That is left Of yourself.

“Edward the Confessor” by Eileen Myles

I have a confession to make I wish there were some role in society I could fulfill I could be a confessor I have a confession to make I have this way when I step into the bakery on 2nd Ave. of wanting to be the only really nice person in the store so the harried sales woman with several toned hair will like me. I do this in all kinds of stores, coffee shops xerox shops, everywhere I go. And invariably I leave my keys, xeroxing, my coffee from the last place I am being so nice. I try so hard to make a great impression on these neutral strangers right down to the perfect warm smile I get entirely lost and stagger back out onto the street, bereft of something major. It’s really leaning too hard on the everyday. My mother was the kind of woman who dragging us into stores always seemed to charm the pants off the cashier. She was such a great person, so human though at home she was such a bitch, I mean really distant. I imitate her and I don’t do it well. She didn’t leave her wallet or us in a store. I’m just a pale imitation it is simply not my style to open the hearts of strangers to my true personhood. I hope you accept this tiny confession of what I am currently going through. And if you are experiencing something of a similar nature tell someone, not me, but tell someone. It’s the new human program to be in. It would be nice for at least these final moments if we could sigh with the relief of being in the same program with all the other humans whispering in school. I can’t quite locate the terror, but I am trying to be my mother or Edward the Confessor smiling down on you with up-praying hands. I am looking down at the tips of my boots as I step across the balcony of the church excited to be allowed to say these things. Outside my church is a relationship. On 11th street this guy and this woman are selling the woman so they can get more dope. All their things are there, rags and loaves of bread and make-up. And there was— this was incredible. Two men lying by the door of the church giving each other blow-jobs. They were sort of street guys, one black one white. I said hey you can’t do that here. They jumped up, one spit come out of his mouth. If you don’t get out of here I’ll call the cops. Don’t call the cops we’ll go, we’ll leave. That was a shock. That was more than I expected to see in a day. Something about seeing the guy spit come out of his mouth. He didn’t have to do that. I guess I scared him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was scared too.

[lodessa]

I posted 3,719 times in 2021

93 posts created (3%)

3626 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 39.0 posts.

I added 1,691 tags in 2021

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#my stepdad used to have a dog who would walk herself by holding the end of the leash in her mouth and not letting it touch the ground as as

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

When your not quite fannish friend comes to you for answers to important questions.

45 notes • Posted 2021-05-15 17:02:25 GMT

#4

Summer is Coming! Jorleesi Summer Solstice Fanworks Exchange Signups Now Open

It's that time again... Welcome to the Jorleesi Fanwork Gift Exchange: Summer Edition. This exchange is open to all types of fanwork creators (fanfic, fanart, graphics, fanvids, playlists, gifsets, etc). If you love Daenerys Targaryen and Jorah Mormont's relationship and you want to give and receive creations highlighting it with other people who feel the same way, you've come to the right place.

Timeline

Signups will begin Tuesday, March 30th and end of Sunday, April 4th

Assignments will go out by Wednesday, April 7th.

Submissions are due by the end of Sunday, June 13th

Works will be revealed anonymously starting on Sunday, June 20th (the Summer Solstice)

Authors will be revealed on Sunday, June 27th

Sign Up Here

46 notes • Posted 2021-03-30 23:47:09 GMT

#3

When you are going through your WIP files and you find this:

Honestly, that is a good summary of the full 16 year experience of being a Veronica Mars fan.

48 notes • Posted 2021-03-15 23:50:46 GMT

#2

59 notes • Posted 2021-02-11 18:22:19 GMT

#1

For the character ask: Brienne

How I feel about this character

I love her so much, both as a person and a character. Like there are a lot of characters out there that are good people but not that interesting of characters and a lot of really compelling exciting characters that are not good people, but Brienne is both.  I love her mixture of deserved confidence and insecurity.  I love her.  The other day I was going over some Audre Lorde poetry, specifically “A Litany for Survival” and  I feel like that idea of “we were never meant to survive” really applies in so many ways to Brienne.  She is living in a hostile world where she is “wrong” but instead of letting that cow her, she decides that since she will never fit in or be invisible, she might as well speak up by doing what she believes is right.  And she does it with such vulnerability (which I think Cat is drawn to about her initially). Like she can’t hide her raw vulnerable spots, she isn’t good at pretending.  She’s too honest, too direct, too true.   She knows, as well as anyone, that the world is unfair and cruel but she doesn’t let change her to be that way or make her numb.  Brienne feels so deeply, so intensely.   We see so many characters “go away inside” (Sansa vanishing into Alayne, Jaime obviously shares that strategy openly, Cersei uses it to endure sexual encounters she isn’t into, Arya hides in made up personas, Tyrion numbs himself with alcohol) but Brienne stays in the agonizing present.  

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Jaime/Brienne is a forever OTP and nothing holds a candle to it, but I’ve been known to dabble a bit in some Brienne femslash (like the time I wrote Brienne/Arianne) partly because I love the idea of someone who is all the things Brienne feels grief about not being seeing and embracing her.  To me, the key thing is that Brienne finds something who loves her for who she is, not in spite of it, but also that she actually wants.  (And Brienne is a sucker for pretty, isn’t she?)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I love fics that have her interacting with Tyrion and/or Sansa, for different reasons.  Tyrion, is fun because they are really unalike in a lot of ways but they both know what it is like to be visibly unacceptable to those around you but also really get who Jaime is and love him.  Sansa is interesting because of all the chivalry/songs stuff and longing for love and handsome knights, but also the realization that the world is not going to give you that, but also because Sansa has never actually had anyone whose true loyalty was to her before.  

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t know that this is unpopular so much as salty, but it really annoys me when people characterize Brienne as not being into feminine things.  She isn’t rejecting femininity, it has rejected her.  She fantasizes about basically swooning in Jaime’s arms and having him comfort her.  She is uncomfortable in the dress not because she doesn’t like it or want to look good in it but because she feels like she doesn’t and it is embarrassing.    Brienne knows she is ugly, but she WANTS to be beautiful.    She wants to be loved.   

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I want her and Jaime to have a better ending than the absolutely garbage that was the show. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, but there’s a difference the tragedy of something like him dying in her arms and saying ”I always said I wanted to die in the arms of the woman I loved” or even just going down together in battle and THAT (derogatory).   

62 notes • Posted 2021-05-05 22:06:51 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[queertheology]

Do I Have To Be An Activist?

First, a meditation.

A Litany For Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours:

For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid

So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive

– Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn

In the fall of 2006, I had been out for two and a half years. Though my university has six LGBT groups, I had not participated in a single event with them. Not the Back-to-School BBQueer, not the Second Chance Prom, not the Lambda tailgate, not the speaker series. Not a single thing.

MY GAYNESS WAS LIMITED TO DATING MEN AND FREQUENTING GAY CLUBS.

That all changed when I joined the whirlwind cross-country faith-based LGBTQ activism program Equality Ride, sponsored by Soulforce. For four months, I lived and breathed gay activism full-time. Today, I conspire with visionary individuals and organizations to change the world through web and media. Many of them are LGBT focused or intentionally LGBT-inclusive in their justice work. I “do” activism every day.

One of the concerns I hear in my work with people in various stages of the coming out process, is “I don’t want to be an activist or in-your-face, I just want to be me.” I feel that too: I want to just be.

There are certainly activists. Folks, myself included, who intentionally work in specific, public ways to change the world.

I am realizing each day that activism is bigger than that though. Bigger than the non-profit professionals and the union organizers and Wall Street occupiers.

I don’t have the luxury of choosing activism, it chose me. I have activism thrust upon me every day as I live in a society that relegates me to Less Than. Every time I present in a gender non-conforming way—whether that’s crossing my legs while sitting on the subway or gesticulating too wildly while speaking—I open myself up danger. Every time I embrace a romantic partner or reference a relationship, I take a risk: my friend might abandon me, a stranger might attack me, an employer or client might terminate me.

And at the same time, every time I live and act openly and proudly, I occupy that piece of life and society, and state: I am here. Every time I talk about my relationships, and my gay friends; every time I embrace a spectrum of gender presentations and roles; I am engaging in activism.

Finding Alignment

In coming out to my pastor and in risking arrest to speak with students at Wisconsin Lutheran… in both of the places, I am activist.

The practice for me (and for you, if you choose it) is to find alignment. Find the spot that feels right. That spot might change from time to time, or moment to moment. And that is OK, that is to be expected.

Find the ways to be true and authentic and proud and bold.

For more check out activism when you’re newly out, or an activism starter kit.

STRESSED ABOUT HOLIDAYS WITH FAMILY?

Learn how to get through your next family get together (whether it’s in-person or virtual) feeling safe, strong, and centered in our upcoming Soul Safe online workshop.

For LGBTQ+ people, getting together with family—whether for the holidays, a special event, or even a simple meal—can be sources of strain, conflict, and sometimes outright hostility. If you are living with unaffirming family or attending an unaffirming church, the stakes are even higher.

In this 90-minute workshop, you will learn practical, actionable tactics as well as powerful mindset shifts so that you can get through your next family gathering feeling safe, strong, and centered.

Register Here

[dk-thrive]

Don’t wait for inspiration. Remember. Do not wait for inspiration. You don’t need to be inspired, to write a poem. You need to reach down and touch the thing that’s boiling inside of you and make it somehow useful.

Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995) Directed by Michelle Parkerson &Ada Gay Griffin.

[sisteroutsiders]

A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1996) dir. by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson

[petervintonjr]

Lesson 12: "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." --Audre Lorde

Born to West Indies immigrant parents and growing up in Harlem in the 1930's, Audre developed a talent for wordsmithing at an early age; as early as the age of four, she overcame a mild stutter by developing a method of literally communicating in poetry --at first appropriating other works, and then writing her own. It would be a springboard to a phenomenally prolific academic career, which included a teaching career at Tougaloo College. Audre produced or published literally thousands of poems, offering a unique vantage point to the civil rights and the feminist movements of the 1960s. One of her most powerful poems, "Power," addresses the emotions swirling around the murder of a black ten-year-old boy by a New York policeman, who is later --big surprise-- acquitted.

Audre also came out as a lesbian during this time period, adding that vantage point to her written output. Her collection of essays "Sister Outsider" is considered one of the definitive works on intersectional feminist theory. A biopic, "A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde," appeared on PBS in 1996 --whet your appetite here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diHzbQNyO2k

[thirdworldnewsreel]

July 8, 6 PM EST

Join us in a celebration of the legacy and power of Audre Lorde and her writings on the 25th anniversary of the seminal film about her life, A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde. RSVP for the event on July 8, 6 PM and you will receive a private Zoom link for the panel and a Vimeo link to watch the film.

[foreverthesoniag]

“What I leave behind has a life of its own.” —Audre Lorde 🎊🎉🎊🎉Reposting and words below from @thefreeblackwomenslibrary_la : “Today we’re honoring the birthdays of two Aquarian legends, Audre Lorde (who later took the African name, Gamba Adisa) and Toni Morrison 🌊 ♒️ We are so, so much better because of their lives.” . . . 🎥 :”A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde” (1995) documentary trailer and clip from @tonimorrisonfilm . . . #audrelorde #tonimorrison https://www.instagram.com/p/B8uluF8lFay/?igshid=11apsm6x6yztr

[garadinervi]

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde, (documentary, 52 min), Directed by Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson, Third World Newsreel, 1995

[openlyandfreely]

CT: Would you describe your writing process? AL: I keep a journal and write in it fairly regularly. I get a lot of my poems out of it. It’s like the raw material for my poems. Sometimes I’m blessed with a poem that comes in the form of a poem, but other times I’ve worked for two years on a poem. For me, there are two very basic and different processes for revising my poetry. One is recognizing that a poem has not yet become itself. In other words, I mean that the feeling, the truth that the poem is anchored in is somehow not clearly clarified inside of me, and as a result it lacks something. Then it has to be re-felt. Then there’s the other process which is easier. The poem is itself, but it has rough edges that need to be refined. That kind of revision involves picking the image that is more potent or tailoring it so that it carries the feeling. That’s an easier kind of rewriting and re-feeling. My journal entries focus on things I feel: feelings that sometimes have no place, no beginning, no end; phrases I hear in passing; something that looks good to me; sometimes just observations of the world. I went through a period once when I felt like I was dying. I wasn’t writing any poetry, and I felt that if I couldn’t write I would split. I was recording in my journal, but no poems came. I know now that this period was a transition in my life. The next year, I went back to my journal, and here were these incredible poems that I could almost lift out of it. Many of them are in The Black Unicorn. “Harriet” is one of them; “Sequelae” and “The Litany for Survival” are others. These poems came right out of the journal. But I didn’t see them as poems then.

Claudia Tate and Audre Lorde