Power by Audre Lorde: Police Brutality and Superiority Over Others

The poem “Power” by Audre Lorde was made in 1978 and based on an event where a black ten-year-old was shot by a white policeman while being written through the narrator’s perspective. This poem is about the effects of police brutality and power over others. The author uses imagery, structure, and word choice to signify this message.

One significant element Audre Lorde uses is the form of the poem itself. Reading the poem we can see that it is written in open form. Open form poetry is when the poem does not use or follow any patterns such as rhymes or meters. The design of the poem seems to be written in a way that describes the event it’s based on and the narrator’s perspective both figuratively and literally. For example, at the start of the fourth stanza, the author writes “Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing was set free by eleven white men who said they were satisfied justice had been done.” This line does not use any rhetorical devices and is literally what it says. As the poem continues this stanza, a shift occurs and ends with, “they had dragged her 4’10” black Woman’s frame over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval… and lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children.” instead of a literal explanation, these lines use rhetorical devices such as metaphors. The whole fourth stanza of the poem is an example of how the form shifts between figurative and literal languages.

Another element that the author uses to create her message is imagery. Imagery is often used in poems to create a visual picture through words that represent an idea or convey an emotion. An example of imagery can be found in the second stanza where it reads, “I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds and a dead child dragging his shattered back.” This quote gives us a visual representation as the metaphor shows the setting of the poem and how the narrator views it. Symbolism is also a rhetoric device that can be seen in this quote as it also shows different symbols such as the dead child or gunshot wounds which can help describe the aspects of the child’s death. The dead child represents the ten-year-old that was killed and the gunshots symbolize how he died.

Lastly, the author uses word choice. Word choice also plays a big part in poetry as it can have multiple uses such as creating a tone. For example, one line at the near end of the second stanza writes, “trying to make power out of hatred and destruction.” Throughout the poem, you may see the narrator use words such as “shattered,” “destruction,” or “hatred.” The tone in the literature is commonly used to create a mood to convey the message. The poem “Power” is possibly meant to show a tone of sadness, hopelessness and the narrator’s rage over the event.

In conclusion, Audre Lorde’s poem “Power” is about police brutality and the idea of superiority over others. She expresses this message by using three different elements: She made her poem open form to make the narrator’s point of view more focused on, used imagery to create a visual representation of the events that took place, and utilized word choice to build up a tone to the theme. This poem can help us learn more about the idea of power in classes how different groups of people were treated in the past.