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Tayari's Blog: Got Poetry?

Posted by TayariJones on April 14, 2006 06:35 AM
Filed under Bookshelf

Yesterday, poet Natasha Trethewey visited George Washington University and read from her gorgeous new book, Native Guard. Natasha is my home girl (in a way. She claims Mississipi, but she went to Venetian Hills and Redan... sounds like an ATLien to me.) Anyway, she is a magnificent poet. I loved her first two books: Domestic Work and Belloq's Ophelia.

Domestic Work is made up of poems from the point of view of the (black) folks who make thier lives through serving others: cooks, welders, maids, drivers, etc. Belloq's Ophelia takes us into the lives of the mixed-race prostitutes in New Orleans' infamous Storyville district.

In her new work, Native Guard, Natasha tackles more person subject matter. She told me that she started this book to write poems about the black soilders who fought in the civil war and indeed, the collection does cover this subject matter. However, she said she found herself writing beautiful and heartbreaking elegies for her mother who passed away at age forty, Natasha's current age. She also writes about her parent's interracial marraige. The poem that the critics often mention is called "Incident", which borrows its title from Countee Cullen. This poem tells of the time the family woke to a cross-burning on their front yard. It begins and ends with, "We tell the story every year."

I love this book. Read it. Buy it. Make someone else read it too.

April 14, 2006 06:55 PM

April 17, 2006 02:41 PM