Criticism

Avi-ram, Amitai F. "Apo Koinou in Audre Lorde and the Moderns: Defining the Differences." Callaloo 9, No. 1 (Winter 1986): 193-208.

Argues that apo koinou, the "figure of speech … in which a single word or phrase is shared between two distinct, independent syntactic units" is one of Lorde's basic methods of poetic composition.

Carr, Brenda. "'A Woman Speaks … I Am Woman and Not White' : Politics of Voice, Tactical Essentialism, and Cultural Intervention in Audre Lorde's Activist Poetics and Practice." College Literature 20, No. 2 (June 1993): 133-53.

Analyzes the relationship between Lorde's ideological beliefs and her poetry.

Dhairyam, Sagri. '"Artifacts for Survival': Remapping the Contours of Poetry with Audre Lorde." Feminist Studies 18, No. 2 (Summer 1992): 229-56.

Maintains that the "competing discourses of race, gender, and sexual persuasion" in Lorde's poetry prevents readers from forming definitive interpretations of her works.

Gilbert, Sandra. "On the Edge of the Estate." Poetry CXXIX, No. 5 (February 1977): 296-301.

Review of The New York Head Shop and Museum. Gilbert observes that when Lorde "connects with her anger, when her fury vibrates through taut cables from head to heart to page, Lorde is capable of rare, and paradoxically, loving jeremiads."

"Don't Look the Other Way." The Progressive 57, No. 11 (November 1993): 43.

Favorable review of The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, Lorde's final, posthumously published collection of poems.

Simmons, Ted C. Review of Our Dead Behind Us. The Los Angeles Times Book Review (December 7, 1986): 4.

Describes Lorde as "gutsy, right out there on the razor's edge of controversy, delicately balancing between despair/hope, dream/nightmare."

Vendler, Helen. Review of The New York Head Shop and Museum. The New York Times Book Review (September 7, 1975): 8.

Considers the pieces in this collection "uneven but intermittently powerful."

Additional coverage of Lorde's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale Research: Black Literature Criticism, Vol. 2; Black Writers, 1; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 25-28R; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 16; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 18, 71; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 41; and Major 20th-century Writers.