Audre Lorde is probably best known as a feminist poet; yet her contributions to the new black poetry movement cover a wide range of themes. Black pride, black love, and black survival in an urban environment are recurring motifs; and the image of the city, in all of its destructive grandeur, dominates many of her poems.

In a statement written especially for the Heritage anthology Sixes and Sevens (1963), edited by Paul Breman in London, Lorde wrote: "I am Black, Woman, and Poet--all three are facts outside the realm of choice. My eyes have a part in my seeing; my breath in my breathing; and all that I am in who I am. All who I love are of my people; it is not simple. I was not born on a farm or in a forest but in the centre of the largest city in the world--a member of...