SOURCE: "Word Warrior," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 256, No. 4, February 1, 1993, pp. 130-33.

In the following review, Clausen uses the coinciding occasions of Lorde's death and the publication of Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New (Revised) to conduct a broad survey of Lorde's life and poetry.

Audre Lorde, poet, died on November 17 at the age of 58, following a fourteen-year war of attrition with cancer, in the midst of which she wrote much of her most important work. Born during the Depression to West Indian immigrant parents, Lorde grew up in Harlem. As a young adult she took part in the "gay-girl" Village scene described in her autobiographical prose narrative Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. She would live mostly in New York City, teaching for many years in the CUNY system, raising a daughter and son in an interracial lesbian relationship and combining writing and political organizing...