suffering, and the equal weight of each trial – learning to dance, acne, death – in the mind of an adolescent.  Her internal struggles are lent legitimacy by writing the poem fromfirst person perspective; this also emphasizes a teenager’s typically egocentric view of the world – “Nobody even stops to think/about my side of it,” she laments in the final verse, and thinks, “why do I have to be/the one/wearing braces.” 

Lorde underscores this point with the juxtaposition of these small injustices with the heavy permanence of death.  In each verse we have imagery of the girl’s fear of death:  “what if I die/before morning,” “suppose I die before graduation,” will I live long enough/to grow up.”  When coupled with troubles about boys and acne and having nothing to wear the next day, we see how, at age fourteen, everything can feel like a life-threatening crisis.  This also indicates that the girl is just becoming aware of what it means to be an adult, what it means to be alive in the world – the threat of death is constant; our lives are not guaranteed, our safety is not guaranteed, our happiness is not guaranteed.  And this is a scary, depressing concept.  Yet still it cannot erase the everyday woes of simply living.

There are multiple poetic devices used in the poem "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde.

1. "Still Sucks"- Alliteration- The repetition of a consonant sound within a line of poetry. Here the "s" sound is repeated.

2. "My skin has betrayed me"- Personification- The giving of human traits or abilities to non-human/non-living things. Here, skin is personified. The skin is given the ability to "betray," a characteristic only humans can possess.

3. "Sing sad"- Alliteration again.

4. "And mommas in the bedroom with the door closed"- Repetition- The repeated use of a word or phrase used for emphasis. Here, readers can see that the speaker's mother does not care about her. She is always in her bedroom with the door closed. The closed door illustrates the literal (the door is actually closed) and the figurative (the mother is closed to the daughter).

Audre Lorde’s poem “Hanging Fire” looks at life through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old. What the young teenager sees is not a happy and secure childhood. The tone of this poem could be described as “foreboding,” which means “fearful apprehension.”

Poets develop their tone by the use of diction, which is word choice. Compared to other forms of writing, poetic language is spare—every word needs to carry significant meaning; there just isn’t room for words that don’t help the poet convey his point. In considering the tone of a poem, a careful reader can usually find some key words that the poet uses to create it.

In “Hanging Fire” one good example of diction that develops tone comes in the second half of that first stanza with:

what if I die
before morning

The implication here is obvious—the thought of death, especially such an imminent death, should not be what is on the mind of a fourteen-year-old.

Poets often repeat key elements of diction in one way or another, and Lorde does this near the end of the poem with these lines:

will I live enough
to grow up

These lines echo the subject’s thought of death from the first stanza. He or she is filled with mortal fear of what might happen in the near future, which is the sense of foreboding that forms the tone of the poem.

The speaker of the poem "Hanging Fire" is a fourteen-year-old girl. During the poem she seems to have the curious, inquisitive nature of a child. She wonders, for example, whether she will "live long enough / to grow up," and she wonders what will happen when she dies. This inquisitive, speculative tone implies that although the girl is now a teenager, she still has some of the natural wonder characteristic of younger children. The speaker is, after all, still only a young teenager.

The speaker's inquisitive, curious tone sometimes seems to become anxious. The girl seems anxious about typical teenage issues, such as the boy she's in love with being immature, and her skin "betray(ing)" her. She is also anxious about having to learn to dance "for the next party," and about "wearing braces" and having "nothing to wear tomorrow."

The biggest source of the girl's anxiety, however, seems to be the fact that her mother has locked herself inside of her bedroom. Indeed each of the three stanzas concludes with the same lines:

and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed

The mother's absence seems to cause the daughter anxiety because the daughter has nobody else to talk to about all of her teenage worries. She would presumably like to talk to her mother about the immature boy she is in love with, and about the dance that she has to learn. The mother, however, is unavailable, and it seems as if she refuses to come out of her bedroom. The daughter is thus unable to resolve any of her worries.