“A Litany for Survival” is a short poem in free verse containing three dense stanzas and a concluding three-line stanza. The title refers to a type of communal prayer involving alternating speakers, usually a leader and a congregation of petitioners. The form of the poem enacts the title’s scene: The lead speaker begins the prayer, directly addressing the other petitioners yet speaking as if also one of the petitioners. The first two stanzas could be delivered by the leader’s solitary voice, as both stanzas give prolonged descriptions of the petitioners’ needs and circumstances. The petitioners’ multiple voices then deliver the third stanza, which proceeds in parallel phrases with succinct repetition similar to the rhythmic verses that a congregation would chant in unison. The leader’s and the petitioners’ voices blend together in the concluding stanza in which a resolution is given for the grave situation that has prompted the ceremony.

As in most ceremonies in which prayer is offered, the petitioners recognize their own insignificance and their defenselessness in relation to powers greater than themselves. They know that those with greater power desire to terrorize them into deathly silence—a silence that will erase their memories and extinguish their children’s dreams for the future. Although the petitioners face their own obliteration, their prayer does not, as prayers normally do, request divine intervention. Engaging in the communal ceremony represented by the poem is itself a means of resisting the will of the powerful. The act of self-expression and the communal sharing of their own desires, all of which are embedded in their meditation, enable the petitioners to resist those who desire their defeat.

The vocality of the poem derives from the oral literary traditions of Africa. Audre Lorde lures the reader into a ceremony that promises to be a common prayer. After joining the ceremony, however, the readers find themselves in unfamiliar supernatural territory where the power being summoned is not the distant, omnipotent Father of Christian faith. The readers discover and the petitioners remember that the power being summoned lies within themselves in their own communal voice.

The prayer ritual is immediately signaled in the poem’s opening line with the words “For those of us who.” This phrase, which also appears at the beginning of stanza 2, creates a solemn mood, alerting the reader that a hallowed ritual is being performed. Reverence is required of the reader as alternating voices utter a precise array of images that evoke intense emotional reactions. Stanzas 1 and 2 follow the same form and describe the petitioners’ situation; therefore, these two stanzas might be uttered by the same voice, which functions as the celebrant who leads the ritual but does not assume a position of superiority over the other petitioners. The celebrant speaks not for but with the other petitioners and is clearly included in the dedication “For those of us who. . . .” The celebrant intimately describes the grave situation of the petitioners’ lives in images that evoke feelings of insecurity, instability, and precariousness.

Life, for the petitioners, takes place “at the shoreline,” a place of constant change where they face momentous decisions with apprehension. The celebrant envisions another time unlike the unbearable present. In the “now” of the present time, their desires must be squeezed into confined spaces “in doorways coming and going.” These spaces were designed for more impersonal pursuits. In the present, they are forced to express love cautiously at inopportune times—“in the hours between dawns/ looking inward and outward/ at once before and after”—because security is not possible. The first stanza ends with a fusion...