'Speaking The Unspeakable' To The New Poet Laureate
English professor Natasha Trethewey was named the 19th U.S. poet laureate last week.
English professor Natasha Trethewey was named the 19th U.S. poet laureate last week.
Jalissa Gray/Creative Commons ImageNatasha Trethewey Reads Two Of Her Poems
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Natasha Trethewey is the newly announced, 19th U.S. poet laureate. The position is described by the Library of Congress as "the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans."
Trethewey tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin that it's a lot of responsibility.
"Just trying to be the biggest promoter of poetry; someone who's really got to do the work of bringing poetry to the widest audience possible," she says.
Poetry, she says, is one of those things people turn to when they need a way to "speak the unspeakable."
"That's because poetry not only can celebrate our joys with us, but it can also mourn with us our losses," she says.
A professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Trethewey is the first Southerner appointed to the post since the very first poet laureate, Robert Penn Warren in 1986.
Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her collection Native Guard, a book about the Louisiana Native Guard, a black Union regiment assigned to guard Confederate soldiers held on Ship Island off Mississippi's Gulf Coast during the Civil War.
Click on the audio links on this page to listen to Natasha Trethewey read the two poems below.
Two Poems By Natasha Trethewey
Elegy
for my father
I think by now the river must be thick
with salmon. Late August, I imagine it
as it was that morning: drizzle needling
the surface, mist at the banks like a net
settling around us — everything damp
and shining. That morning, awkward
and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
into the current and found our places —
you upstream a few yards, and out
far deeper. You must remember how
the river seeped in over your boots,
and you grew heavy with that defeat.
All day I kept turning to watch you, how
first you mimed our guide's casting,
then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky
between us; and later, rod in hand, how
you tried — again and again — to find
that perfect arc, flight of an insect
skimming the river's surface. Perhaps
you recall I cast my line and reeled in
two small trout we could not keep.
Because I had to release them, I confess,
I thought about the past — working
the hooks loose, the fish writhing
in my hands, each one slipping away
before I could let go. I can tell you now
that I tried to take it all in, record it
for an elegy I'd write — one day —
when the time came. Your daughter,
I was that ruthless. What does it matter
if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting
your line, and when it did not come back
empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,
dreaming, I step again into the small boat
that carried us out and watch the bank receding —
my back to where I know we are headed.
Myth
I was asleep while you were dying.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,
the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking
you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.
*
Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.
But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in — still, trying —
I make between my slumber and my waking.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.
"Elegy" from THRALL: Poems by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright © 2012 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
"Myth" from NATIVE GUARD: Poems by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright © 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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