Natasha Trethewey Reading
Mar. 2nd, 2009 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34Tonight, I went to a poetry reading by Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 2007 in addition to all the other awards she's gathered over the years.
Several poems that she read are included on this website (http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/442). You can also listen to her read these poems on the site. She seems to have the same reading cadence of every damn poet I've ever met; I don't know why, but poets seem incapable of reading their poems in anything other than a supremely annoying and monotonous lilt. But nevertheless.
Y'all, I was impressed. Really impressed. Trethewey is from Mississippi--Gulfport, specifically--which is where much of my family is located. I had such a sense of place as she was reading because of my familiarity with the area. She mostly read from Native Guard, the volume that won the Pulitzer, and those poems are centered around two themes: elegies for her mother and the African American Native Guard that fought and died for the Union on Ship Island during the Civil War. I have been to Ship Island many times; I have seen the fort. I've been sunburned on the ferry. I've seen the monument the Daughters of the Confederacy placed in honor of the fallen Confederate soldiers, but as Trethewey's poetry so poignantly reminds me, of the dead African American Guard, there is no mention. I didn't even know anything about it until she read tonight.
Many of her poems are also about miscenegation. She is the product of a interracial marriage which was illegal in Mississippi at the time. Her birth was even considered a crime. I did not know this (although sadly it does not surprise me), but Alabama had a miscenegation law on the books until 11 years ago. According to Trethewey, when the state voted to strike the law from the books, 40% of voters voted to KEEP IT ON. *shakes head* This is powerful, powerful stuff.
I highly recommend this poet.
Several poems that she read are included on this website (http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/442). You can also listen to her read these poems on the site. She seems to have the same reading cadence of every damn poet I've ever met; I don't know why, but poets seem incapable of reading their poems in anything other than a supremely annoying and monotonous lilt. But nevertheless.
Y'all, I was impressed. Really impressed. Trethewey is from Mississippi--Gulfport, specifically--which is where much of my family is located. I had such a sense of place as she was reading because of my familiarity with the area. She mostly read from Native Guard, the volume that won the Pulitzer, and those poems are centered around two themes: elegies for her mother and the African American Native Guard that fought and died for the Union on Ship Island during the Civil War. I have been to Ship Island many times; I have seen the fort. I've been sunburned on the ferry. I've seen the monument the Daughters of the Confederacy placed in honor of the fallen Confederate soldiers, but as Trethewey's poetry so poignantly reminds me, of the dead African American Guard, there is no mention. I didn't even know anything about it until she read tonight.
Many of her poems are also about miscenegation. She is the product of a interracial marriage which was illegal in Mississippi at the time. Her birth was even considered a crime. I did not know this (although sadly it does not surprise me), but Alabama had a miscenegation law on the books until 11 years ago. According to Trethewey, when the state voted to strike the law from the books, 40% of voters voted to KEEP IT ON. *shakes head* This is powerful, powerful stuff.
I highly recommend this poet.
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Date: 2009-03-03 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 04:27 am (UTC)