Coal

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1976

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Defining Blackness and Beauty

One theme of “Coal” is centering and describing the experience of living as a Black woman. According to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Lorde “worked to foreground black cultural experience and language” (The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 1493). The title itself, coal, begins the poem by looking at a black rock. In addition to its color, coal is known for its transformative properties. There is a famous saying, usually attributed to Henry Kissinger, “A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.” Lorde plays with this idea, which is poetic but not scientifically grounded. The speaker is aligned with coal. This is seen in the first line “I” (Line 1), which immediately follows the word coal.

Furthermore, the first-person speaker is defined explicitly and repeatedly as coming from inside the earth, like coal. Lorde repeats the phrase “from the earth’s inside” in Lines 3 and 25. Coal is found deep inside the earth. Before it is mined, it exists in darkness. There are no natural light sources deep underground—it is pitch black around the coal. The speaker identifies with this type of darkness. She asserts that she, as the “I” of the poem, is “the total black” (Line 2). The totality of the darkness in the earth speaks to how her existence cannot be divided from Blackness; it forms her.

In the last stanza, the inside of the earth is connected to womb imagery. Like the darkness that exists within the depths of the earth, the womb is often described as a mysterious cave. The speaker asserts, “I am black because I come from the earth’s inside” (Line 25). This offers a more maternal image than the first stanza. The earth itself is often characterized as a mother in many poems and myths. This is a positive association. Lorde defines Blackness as natural, maternal, and beautiful.

The Power of Language and Speech

Building upon the associations between Blackness and coal, Lorde associates words with diamonds. The condition of being Black is being under pressure from discrimination and racism. Lorde’s descriptions of words focus on the embodied experience of speaking, creating a link between her Black body forming diamonds. She begins by explaining that a sound becoming a word is “coloured / By who pays what for speaking” (Lines 6-7). The price of forming words is linked to the history of chattel slavery in America. This institution put a price on human life, making it a saleable item like coal and diamonds. Lorde associates the repercussions of slavery’s commodification of humans with the pressure that would turn coal into diamonds.

The qualities that make diamonds valuable are their ability to reflect and refract light. These qualities are called brilliance and fire in the diamond industry. Lorde refers to diamonds coming “into a knot of flame” (Lines 5 and 24). This can refer to both the inherent shiny quality of the raw gem and the practice of cutting facets into the gem. Lorde references the corruption of the diamond industry, which oppresses Black people in African diamond mines. There are slave wages, child labor, and a number of other unethical business practices by the diamond companies.

Rather than the diamonds sold out of these unethical practices, Lorde focuses on a metaphorical diamond: the words of a Black woman. People who listen to her must take her “word for jewel in your open light” (Line 26). Her words are valuable because they come from a personal and generational history of pressure, that is, oppression and racism. The past pain in her life and the life of her family, and specifically speaking about that pain (bringing it to light), creates words that are as valuable as jewels.

The Quality of Openness

Lorde also explores the concept of openness in “Coal.” She presents “many kinds of open” (Line 4). These types of openness include pressure and cutting. The first example Lorde offers of “open” is a diamond becoming brilliant, or gaining fire. This is achieved through pressure within the earth creating the gem and/or cutting facets into the gem. Diamond-cutting imagery extends into another example of “open”: words that are open “Like a diamond on glass windows” (Line 9). Here, rather than being cut, diamonds are doing the cutting. Diamonds are known for being harder than glass, and cutting glass is a way to test if a diamond is real. Her words, created under pressure, can be sharp.

This sharp, cutting openness can be contrasted with a more mainstream association with diamonds: love. Lorde asserts that love “is a word another kind of open” (Line 23). The diction (word choice) of “another” (Line 23) and “kind(s)” (Lines 4 and 23) defines openness as a large concept that encompasses many things. At the end of the poem, openness is part of emerging from inside the earth. Lorde speaks jewel-like words in the “open light” (Line 26). She is formed from the underground parts of the earth that are in darkness, and she also emerges—through pressure and pain—to become part of the world that is bathed in light.