Natasha D. Trethewey

A compilation of poetry addresses the complex history of the American South, offering a lyrical tribute to the Native Guard, one of the first black regiments in service during the Civil War and paying tribute to the author's mother and her illegal interracial marriage.

Native Guard

Amar

Before the war, they were happy, he said, quoting our textbook. (This was senior-year history class.) The slaves were clothed, fed, and better off under a master's care. I watched the words blur on the page. No one like a raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me. It was late; we still had Reconstruction Whe to cover before the test, and-luckily- three hours of watching Gone with the Wind. History, the teacher said, of the old South - a true account of how things were back then. On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth, ass bucked eyes, our textbook's grinning proof-a lie my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.

Some names shall deck the page of history as it is Written on stone. Some will not. Yesterday, word came of colored troops, dead on the battlefield at Port Hudson; how General Banks was heard to say I have no dead there, and left them, unclaimed. Last night, I dreamt their eyes still open - dim, clouded as the eyes of fish washed ashore, yet fixed - staring back at me. Still, more come today eager to enlist. Their bodies - haggard faces, gaunt limbs - bring news of the mainland. Starved, they suffer like our prisoners. Dying, they plead for what we do not have to give. Death makes equals of us: a fair master. 

The sun is high and the child's shadow, almost fully beneath her, touches the sole of her bare foot on concrete. Even though it must be hot, she takes the step; her goal to read is the subject of this shot-a book in her hand, the library closed, the door just out of reach. Stepping up, she must look at the two signs, read them slowly once more. The first one, in pale letters, barely shows against the white background. Though she will read Greenwood Public Library for Negroes, the other, bold letters on slate, will lead her away, out of the frame, a finger pointing left. I want to call her, say wait. But this is history: she can't linger. She'll read the sign that I read: You Are Late.

The road going home was pocked with holes, That home-going road's always full of holes; Though we slow down, time's wheel still rolls. 

You can get there from here, though there's no going home. Everywhere you go will be somewhere you've never been. Try this: head south on Mississippi 49, one-by-one mile markers ticking off another minute of your life. Follow this to its natural conclusion dead end at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches in a sky threatening rain. Cross over the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand dumped on the mangrove swamp - buried terrain of the past. Bring only what you must carry - tome of memory, its random blank pages. On the dock where you board the boat for Ship Island, Someone will take your picture: the photograph who you were will be waiting when you return.

Sarah Vaughan

Not much of a poetry fan, but I really enjoyed the way that Tretheway so easily synched the events of The Civil War with her own feelings today.

Ana Hein

Natasha Trethewey

Included in this audio-enhanced edition are recordings of the U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey reading Native Guard in its entirety, as well as an interview with the poet from the HMH podcast The Poetic Voice, in which she recounts what it was like to grow up in the South as the daughter of a white father and a black mother and describes other influences that inspired the work. Experience this Pulitzer Prize–winning collection in an engaging new way. Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards -- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life. The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.

Native Guard

Reviews

Highlights