Claire Jenns
the laws of temporal reason . Thus , within these poems , magic and witchcraft function as counterpoints to an essentialist patriarchy . It is here however , that Lorde ’ s intersectional standpoint becomes especially pertinent in inserting race into the divide between female magic and male reason . She explicitly illustrates this in her statement that ‘ The white fathers told us : I think , therefore I am . The Black mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams : I feel therefore I can be free .’ Lorde takes this ancient Black mother that she believes is inherent within all women , and places her directly alongside witches in the second stanza , highlighting their importance in the
As voice provides the speaker with power , an intricate oneness with their ancestors like the Black mother Lorde describes also acts as a source of strength . The expansion of space in the first stanza is now extended to an expansion of time , as demonstrated in the lines ‘ and still seeking / my sisters / witches in Dahomey ’ ( AWS , ll . 19-21 ). The ambiguous syntax here means that the action of ‘ seeking ’ ( Ibid ) is not onesided , but rather carried out by both the speaker and her sisters . Moreover , the adverb ‘ still ’ ( Ibid ) echoes the infinite stretch of time that Coleridge and Sexton both
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utilise in their poems . Despite this , the specific situating of ‘ witches in Dahomey ’ ( Ibid ) sets Lorde apart from these other poets that do not place their witches within an exact historical period . This particularity offers the reader a diversified version of witchcraft that is firmly African and deliberately not Eurocentric . In turn , this transforms previous images of the moon and sun that can now be specifically attributed to Dahomean religion and culture . Along with the impartation of voice , it is being grounded within this tradition that gives the speaker the significance they have hitherto lacked . This is the case for all women poets , as Eavan Boland argues , ‘ how emblematic are the unexpressed lives of other women to the woman poet ’. However , this is especially applicable to black women poets like Lorde who are routinely afforded even less significance than their white counterparts . In this sense , she uses the lives of the ancient Dahomean community of witches as the emblem of A Woman Speaks by intricately connecting them with her speaker ’ s self-worth . They ‘ wear me inside their coiled cloths / as our mother did ’ ( AWS , ll . 22-23 ), with the notion of being ‘ coiled ’ ( Ibid ) emphasising the complexity and inseparability of the familial relationships between women in the