harborshore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
harborshore) wrote2010-02-20 08:25 pm
harborshore) wrote2010-02-20 08:25 pm
Entry tags:
5. southern trees
This collection has some of the best poetry I've ever read, for the record. Just to get that out of the way.
It deals with difficult subject matter that is personal (the end of a relationship) and that is bigger than that (race relations past and present in the US, and isn't that a polite way to talk about racism and the Civil War), but it also reverses that, because the personal can be for everyone, and the political or historical can be very personal indeed.
Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway.
It's hard to review Tretheway, except to just say, read her. Read her, please. She's half personal history, half history of the South, half clean lines and sharp, sharp narrative that is never explicit but always clear. Like this, in "Incident":
It's repetition, what makes this so effective, the way the moment seems to stretch on forever. It's also the fact that she doesn't tell us anything more than what we need to hear to see it, the cross, the men "white as angels in their gowns," the fact that no one came, because "nothing really happened," right?
It's a remarkable poetry collection, this one--the way she slides in and out of the personal (or maybe I should say she makes the personal universal), the way she uses references, the way there isn't a single unnecessary comma or word or phrase anywhere.
Also, just, this poem? Is my frame of reference at the moment.
Previous reviews: The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera | Libyrinth by Pearl North | Ash by Malinda Lo | The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
It deals with difficult subject matter that is personal (the end of a relationship) and that is bigger than that (race relations past and present in the US, and isn't that a polite way to talk about racism and the Civil War), but it also reverses that, because the personal can be for everyone, and the political or historical can be very personal indeed.
Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway.
It's hard to review Tretheway, except to just say, read her. Read her, please. She's half personal history, half history of the South, half clean lines and sharp, sharp narrative that is never explicit but always clear. Like this, in "Incident":
We tell the story every year --
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn --
though nothing really happened,
the charred grass now green again.
We peered from the windows, shade drawn,
at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
the charred grass still green. Then
we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.
At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.
We darkened our room and lit hurricane lamps,
the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil
It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns.
When they were done, they left quietly. No one came.
The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;
by morning the flames had all dimmed.
When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came.
Nothing really happened.
By morning all the flames had dimmed.
We tell the story every year.
It's repetition, what makes this so effective, the way the moment seems to stretch on forever. It's also the fact that she doesn't tell us anything more than what we need to hear to see it, the cross, the men "white as angels in their gowns," the fact that no one came, because "nothing really happened," right?
It's a remarkable poetry collection, this one--the way she slides in and out of the personal (or maybe I should say she makes the personal universal), the way she uses references, the way there isn't a single unnecessary comma or word or phrase anywhere.
Also, just, this poem? Is my frame of reference at the moment.
Theories of Time and Space
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
rigging 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.
Previous reviews: The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera | Libyrinth by Pearl North | Ash by Malinda Lo | The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
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