Hanging Fire Analysis

"Hanging Fire" is written in free verse. It doesn't have a regular rhyme scheme or meter; it's not written in a tight form such as a sestina or villanelle. But that doesn't mean that Lorde's poem i...

The speaker of "Hanging Fire" is a 14-year-old girl. Her main personality trait is that she's worried. She's worried about typical teenager stuff: braces, pimples, and middle school dances. But she...

There's not too much in "Hanging Fire" to clue us in about setting. The speaker talks about her room being too small for her, and her mom spending way too much time "in the bedroom / with the door...

"Hanging Fire" is characterized by short lines and a pretty straightforward vocabulary. The poem's speaker is a14-year-old girl, and hey, whaddaya know, the poem actually sounds like it's being spo...

"Hanging Fire" is the title of the poem, and it comes from the lingo of weaponry. ("Hang Fire" is also the title of a pretty '80s-tastic Rolling Stones song). In case gunnery is not your field of e...

Feminism wasn't just a political position for Audre Lorde; it was a way of life. In her poetry, she represented the voices of many different types of women, many of whom had been silenced by patria...

"Hanging Fire" is a pretty straightforward poem. There's not a lot of highfalutin' diction. There's no crazy syntax, nor complex meter, nor off-the-wall metaphors; the poem, after all, is spoken in...

Audre Lord's first poem was published in Seventeen magazine. (Source)Lorde's near-sightedness was so bad that she was declared legally blind as a child. (Source)Before she died, Lorde held an Afric...

There's just a hint of desire in this poem: the speaker tells us that there's some boy out there in the world whom she "cannot live without." But for the most part, the poem is filled with non-sexy...