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Poetry is not a Luxury

Audre Lorde

..poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.

from The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

My Geology

Sheila Packa

Posted 2025.03.16

I excavate these words from a vein of iron
from stones broken
beneath old growth
from the open pit — lit by dynamite
by men whose lives are punctuated by midnights
who drive new cars to the plant,
the Crusher and Agglomerator,
and later suffer mesothelioma.
I drive in acid rain
my compass gone awry
over Proterozoic layers with four wheel drive
aware of reverse polarity.
These words are test drills and core samples
from the Boundary Waters
these words wrung from the whistles
and wheels that turn
and have never projected into board rooms.
I have yet to wield these powers or capitalize
see the returns.
I claim my words from the broken
English, damaged roots,
Finnish syntax, and geomagnetic fields
from Eminent Domain
small print, unreadable clauses.
I find my vowels
from labor contracts and mine dumps
factories and invisible contamination.
My words, in the run off
in open streams — oxidize
form like tree rings
in industrial circles
heat in the smelters, pour like lava into steel
form these rails that carry the trains
these trains that carry this freight.

from Night Train Red Dust

Definitions

Critical Theory Wikipedia

"Critical theory's main tenets center on analyzing systemic power relations in society, focusing on the dynamics between groups with different levels of social, economic, and institutional power.[5][6] Unlike traditional social theories that aim primarily to describe and understand society, critical theory explicitly seeks to critique and transform it. Thus, it positions itself as both an analytical framework and a movement for social change."