Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Inheritance-His" by Audre Lorde is a profoundly moving elegy that dives into the complex relationship between a father and a daughter. The five-section poem weaves in themes of identity, family, race, and history, creating a rich tapestry that allows us to enter the poet's emotional and psychological landscape.

The opening lines set the stage for the intense meditation that follows: "My face resembles your face/less and less each day." The words tap into the ambivalence about familial resemblance, both physical and metaphorical. The speaker begins by acknowledging her own shifting identity, distanced from her father's likeness. She was once unmistakably her father's daughter, "alone among my creamy fine-***** sisters," but over time, something has shifted. With the father's death, a door opened onto her mother, signifying a shift in her understanding of her identity and a broadening of her emotional horizons.

The poem recounts the father's journey, "from Grenada treeferns" to "the docks of the Hotel Astor," painting a vivid portrait of a Black man's struggles and aspirations in a society that mostly recognizes "white men/ruled by money." This theme of economic struggle, intertwined with racial identity, is a recurring motif. Yet, the poem does not shy away from detailing the father's shortcomings; he is "the enforcer of the law," a man of "deep and wordless passion" who abandoned his first two daughters. The speaker, a "renegade poet," seeks answers in her "blood," struggling to reconcile the various fragments of her father's life and personality.

The emotional weight of the poem culminates in the speaker's account of her father threatening to shoot her "if I am the one." It's a chilling moment that draws the reader closer to the emotional center of the poem-the complexities of love, disappointment, betrayal, and the unfathomable depths of family relations. "Our deepest bonds remain/the mirror and the gun," the speaker notes, drawing a harrowing line between self-recognition and violence, two things inherited from her father.

As the speaker meets an old judge who knew her father, she is made to confront her own legacy and the ways in which she has both absorbed and transcended her father's influence. She is older now than her father was at his death and grapples with her complex inheritance-qualities she both cherishes and resents. This moment allows the speaker to realize her father was more than just the stern man of the "23rd Psalm," but also a man of "unshared secrets" and "twisted measurements."

"Inheritance-His" serves as an existential query into how much of us is a result of where we come from, and how much is uniquely our own. The poem is not just an account of a daughter trying to understand her father, but also a story of self-discovery and reckoning with one's history and identity. With its rich narrative, intricate emotional texture, and deeply rooted cultural and historical context, Audre Lorde's poem is a compelling journey into the human heart and the bonds that both sustain and confound us.

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