Natasha Trethewey's Poetry Essay Questions

How does Trethewey approach her historical poems?

Race figures as one of the most important themes in Trethewey's poetry. She often depicts the role that it plays in the lives of individuals, examining how people's personal lives intersect with political power and prejudice. In her historical works, she looks at these issues from the lens of a character who experienced an important historical moment. In "Native Guard," she sharply portrays a Black soldier's gradual disillusionment with the Union Army. As he witnesses the thankless sacrifices of other Black soldiers, he is eventually forced to reckon with the fact that their contributions are not respected or acknowledged. In this way, Trethewey focuses on the mistreatment of these men on a human scale.

How does form play a role in Trethewey's poetry?

Trethewey seeks to find the best format to suit the content of her poems. In "Native Guard," she uses the sonnet sequence to build her themes over a progression. She is able to show her speaker's shifting emotional state by breaking up his narrative into episodes, focusing in on different historical events, like the battle at Pascagoula or the initial arrival of the Confederate prisoners at Ship Island. It also allows her to repeat certain lines and subtly tweak their meaning, revealing the speaker's changing perspective. She works in a variety of styles to best accommodate her content and themes.

How would you describe the style of Trethewey's work?

Trethewey's work often features a reflective tone, with a speaker who is looking back at the past. The speaker's word choice is often clear and direct, but very rich with figurative language and strong images. Her poems also tend to avoid hyperbole and understatement, instead focusing on the realistic details of a scene, however harsh or difficult. In her historical poems, she often weaves in references to major events, giving a small-scale perspective on their impact. Her work focuses on grounded details that give a sense of a character's daily existence.

How does Trethewey write about mixed-race individuals in her poetry?

In her poetry, Trethewey captures the struggle of mixed-race individuals to fit in or belong. In Bellocq's Ophelia, she writes about a mixed-race prostitute's continual effort to act and appear more "white," in order to conform to society's expectations of her. These attempts are shown to be exhausting and sometimes dangerous, as her lack of societal acceptance pushes her to maintain these efforts. In her more personal works, Trethewey writes about her own relationship to racial identity, showing instances in which people pushed her to emphasize different parts of her ethnicity. In "Flounder," her aunt tells her to keep her hat on so that she stays as white as her father. Moments like this reveal the complicated moments she navigated throughout her life, as a biracial person.

How does Trethewey use the pronoun "we" in her poetry?

Trethewey uses the pronoun "we" in her work to show communal actions and feelings. In "Housekeeping," the poem begins with the speaker using "we" instead of "I" to show that the speaker and her mother share domestic work and spend their days engaged in the same activities. In "Incident," the entire poem is written from the perspective of multiple speakers, referred to in the text as "we." This formal choice allows Trethewey to more accurately convey the unified feeling of terror experienced by a Black family witnessing a cross burning. These instances, and others like them, show the moments of suffering, toil, and joy that are shared by families and communities.