The Black Unicorn - Poems (Paperback, Revised)

In her seventh book, Audre Lorde attempts a symbolic picture of black womanhood; an effort which fails completely. The poems offer little in the way of an emotional center but rely, rather, on references to obscure African rituals, places, and objects. Ultimately these become ornamental instruments for keeping the poems inaccessible, as in "Dahomey": "It was in Abomey that I felt/ the full blood of my father's wars/ and where I found my mother/ Seboulisia/ standing with outstretched palms hip high. . . ." The language often verges on the incantatory, but misses its mark through flatness and a subject either incomprehensible or dull. The title poem reads: "The black unicorn is greedy./ The black unicorn is impatient./ The black unicorn was mistaken/ for a shadow/ or symbol/ through a Cold country/ where mist painted mockeries/ of my fury. . . ." Difficult as it is to discern what Lorde is trying to say in these lines, they are more engaging than most of her attempts at profound ethnic symbolism. The book fails because the vision is backed by a lackluster imagination, and an inability to transform external detail into emotional experience. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Black Unicorn is a collection of poems by a woman who, Adrienne Rich writes, "for the complexity of her vision, for her moral courage and the catalytic passion of her language, has already become, for many, an indispensable poet."

Rich continues: "Refusing to be circumscribed by any simple identity, Audre Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity. Her rhythms and accents have the timelessness of a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America, beyond the North American earth, to Abomey and the Dahomeyan Amazons. These are poems nourished in an oral tradition, which also blaze and pulse on the page, beneath the reader's eye."

General

Imprint:	W W Norton & Co Inc
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 1995
First published:	August 1995
Authors:	Audre Lorde
Dimensions:	211 x 137 x 12mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	136
Edition:	Revised
ISBN-13:	978-0-393-31237-9
Categories:	Books
LSN:	0-393-31237-2
Barcode:	9780393312379

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