The Body of a Poet

If we are--to some extent--the sum of the nouns and adjectives which describe us, Audre Lorde was a bountiful woman indeed. In this beautifully cinematic tribute, writer/director Somali Fernando offers a series of highlights from the life of the black lesbian poet who died in 1992 at the age of 58, after a 14 year battle with cancer. The framing device--which is the weakest aspect of the film--has a group of multi-racial lesbians discussing the relative merits/demerits of Lorde's life in forced sound bites; a mercifully short sequence which quickly gives way to dramatized scenes backed by powerful poetic excerpts and a saucy sense of humor. Galvanized by the issues of race, politics, and sex, Lorde wrote about rediscovering African roots (and America's refusal to come to terms with the legacy of slavery), the joys of lesbian sex (a relatively graphic onscreen grapple is cut with wicked levity as the women lean over the bed to screw the caps back on a veritable sea of honey jars, or as we're no doubt intended to infer, 'honey pots'), and her "encroaching death." Artful (as opposed to "arty"), moving, funny, and undeniably erotic, this is strongly recommended for larger public libraries and women's studies programs. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)