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Photo credit: 2012 Nancy Crampton as posted on https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-trethewey
"Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the daughter of poet, professor, and Canadian emigrant Eric Trethewey and social worker Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough. Her parents had traveled to Ohio to marry because their marriage was illegal in Mississippi at the time of Trethewey's birth, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws with Loving v. Virginia. Her birth certificate noted the race of her mother as "colored", and the race of her father as "Canadian." Structurally, her work combines free verse with more structured, traditional forms such as the sonnet and the villanelle. Thematically, her work examines "memory and the racial legacy of America". A former US poet laureate, Trethewey is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (2018), Thrall (2012), Native Guard (2006), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000)."
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-trethewey
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Poems
Miscegenation
In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi. They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose namebegins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi. A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the sameas slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi. Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his namefor the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi. My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi. When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the sameage he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi. I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.
-from Native Guard: Poems (2006)
In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi. They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose namebegins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi. A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the sameas slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi. Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his namefor the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi. My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi. When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the sameage he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi. I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.
-from Native Guard: Poems (2006)
Genus NarcissusFaire daffadills, we weep to see / You haste away so soone.—Herrick
The road I walked home from school was dense with trees and shadow, creek-side, and lit by yellow daffodils, early blossoms
bright against winter’s last gray days. I must have known they grew wild, thought no harm in taking them. So I did—
gathering up as many as I could hold, then presenting them, in a jar, to my mother. She put them on the sill, and I sat nearby,
watching light bend through the glass, day easing into evening, proud of myself for giving my mother some small thing.
Childish vanity. I must have seen in them some measure of myself—the slender stems, each blossom a head lifted up
toward praise, or bowed to meet its reflection. Walking home those years ago, I knew nothing of Narcissus or the daffodils’ short spring—
how they’d dry like graveside flowers, rustling when the wind blew—a whisper, treacherous, from the sill. Be taken with yourself,
they said to me; Die early, to my mother.
-from Native Guard: Poems (2006)
The road I walked home from school was dense with trees and shadow, creek-side, and lit by yellow daffodils, early blossoms
bright against winter’s last gray days. I must have known they grew wild, thought no harm in taking them. So I did—
gathering up as many as I could hold, then presenting them, in a jar, to my mother. She put them on the sill, and I sat nearby,
watching light bend through the glass, day easing into evening, proud of myself for giving my mother some small thing.
Childish vanity. I must have seen in them some measure of myself—the slender stems, each blossom a head lifted up
toward praise, or bowed to meet its reflection. Walking home those years ago, I knew nothing of Narcissus or the daffodils’ short spring—
how they’d dry like graveside flowers, rustling when the wind blew—a whisper, treacherous, from the sill. Be taken with yourself,
they said to me; Die early, to my mother.
-from Native Guard: Poems (2006)
White Lies
The lies I could tell,when I was growing uplight-bright, near-white,high-yellow, red-bonedin a black place,were just white lies.
I could easily tell the white folksthat we lived uptown,not in that pink and greenshanty-fled shotgun sectionalong the tracks. I could actlike my homemade dressescame straight out the windowof Maison Blanche. I could evenkeep quiet, quiet as kept,like the time a white girl said(squeezing my hand), Nowwe have three of us in this class.
But I paid for it every timeMama found out.She laid her hands on me,then washed out my mouthwith Ivory soap. Thisis to purify, she said,and cleanse your lying tongue.Believing her, I swallowed sudsthinking they'd workfrom the inside out.
The lies I could tell,when I was growing uplight-bright, near-white,high-yellow, red-bonedin a black place,were just white lies.
I could easily tell the white folksthat we lived uptown,not in that pink and greenshanty-fled shotgun sectionalong the tracks. I could actlike my homemade dressescame straight out the windowof Maison Blanche. I could evenkeep quiet, quiet as kept,like the time a white girl said(squeezing my hand), Nowwe have three of us in this class.
But I paid for it every timeMama found out.She laid her hands on me,then washed out my mouthwith Ivory soap. Thisis to purify, she said,and cleanse your lying tongue.Believing her, I swallowed sudsthinking they'd workfrom the inside out.
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