CABLES TO RAGE
First edition of Lorde's second book, including "Martha," the poet's "first overtly lesbian poem to be published" (Ann E. Reuman).
Very good plus.
Price: $3,200.00
CABLES TO RAGE
"You cannot get closer to death than this Martha / the nearest you've come to living yourself."
Audre Lorde published her first poem while in high school and recalled that, as a child, she "literally communicated through poetry" (Poetry Foundation). A leading light of the Black Arts Movement, as well as a pioneering LGBTQ+ voice, Lorde closely tied her writing and and activism together. Published in London by Paul Breman (who a decade earlier had included Lorde's poems in his anthology BLACK ALL DAY), CABLES TO RAGE established the style that would go on to define Lorde's career: "While many African American poets of her time focused on black nationalism and urban realism, Lorde placed relationships amid global concerns and gave voice to what many had rejected, hidden, or ignored" (Reuman). The iconic cover of CABLES was in many ways as daring as its verse; featuring "an imposing head shot of the poet, with gray tints that bragged of a natural, intellectual femininity [...] Lorde decidedly made no attempt to conceal her lack of conventional beauty with artificial applications" (De Veaux 114). An important and influential work of African American poetry, and in our experience at least as scarce as her 1968 debut.
Read more: Poetry Foundation, "Audre Lorde"; Reuman, "Cables to Rage," The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, 63; De Veaux, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde.
The Object
First printing. London: Paul Breman, 1970. 8.5'' x 5.25''. Original stapled photographic wrappers. Heritage series volume nine. 28 pages. Light edgewear. Spine toned. Overall, clean and sound.
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