“Hanging Fire” By: Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde wrote for others, but often times she would write for herself. When she couldn’t find a poem that would express exactly how she felt, she would write one herself. Lorde felt she needed to speak the truth. She often wrote about feminism and other struggles because she knew that others would hear her. Hanging Fire is a perfect example of Lorde’s writing styles and influences; it was written in 1978, and it recalls her struggles with growing up and finding herself. The poem consists of 35 lines of declarative sentences. The poem is written in first person from the perspective of a 14 year old girl struggling with growing up. The young girl speaks to the audience by using the words “I” and “my”, so the reader is able to get a sense of the speakers feelings, or in this case, her anxieties. Another way she was able to personalize this poem was by how she structured it. The sentences are short, only two to seven syllables long, to stress the importance of each line. Lorde wanted the reader to be able to connect with the girl, so she used a rather informal dialect so the reader is able to easily understand how along she is and how much she’s struggling with growing up. The first stanza expresses the girl’s secret love for an immature boy. The stanza ends with “and momma’s in the bedroom with the door closed”, which has more then one meaning and which serves as the ending to each stanza. This sentence explains that the speaker, just like Lorde, didn’t have a close relationship with her parents and perhaps they didn’t always offer support. It also symbolizes the girl’s alienation and loneliness, which is severely impacting her as she matures from a child to a teen. Stanza two states that she would be okay with dying because she’s struggling so much that death seems to be the easiest way out. The line “…but finally tell the truth about me” might symbolize