Respond to these three post:
1. “No names carved for the Native Guards– 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx. What is the monument to their legacy?” (Tretheway 44). Throughout her collection of poems, Native Guard, Natasha Thretheway draws anger, sorrow, and inspiration from the suffering of the men in the “supply unit” that was, the Native Guard, to tell the story of her abused mother. I thought that this collection of poems would be mostly about individual experiences of men who served in the Native Guard, but it was much more about collective suffering. I thought it was structured powerfully. Tretheway opens the collections poems such as Genus Narcissus, What The Body Can Say, and What is Evidence?, that are more directly about her own experience with grief, and the fate of her mother, a woman of color at the hands of an abusive man. In the second part, Tretheway focuses more on the collective suffering of black people in Mississippi throughout history, setting on the poem Native Guard that is a diary of sorts of the tragic experience of the Native Guard in the civil war. The final chapter of the collection merges these two topics of Tretheway’s loss of a mother, and the Native Guard’s loss of freedom, humanity, and proper memorialization. The structure of the collection lent itself to a deeper understanding of Tretheway’s attempt to pay homage to the power of the men in the Native Guard, through a meditation on the death of her mother.
Each poem in the collection was impactful in its own right. A few that stuck out the most for me were; Theories of Time and Space, Genus Narcissus, What is Evidence, Glyph, Aberdeen 1913, and Providence. Theories of Time and Space is a beautiful opening poem about a movement away from home and what is safe and well known. Tretheway writes, “bring only what you must carry– tome of memory, its random blank pages” (1). There is no luxury of carrying anything that might protect you, when you move towards the uncharted traumatic territory of the Civil War as a black man, the death of a mother, or the general suffering of enslaved black people and freed black people alike experience in the South. In Genus Narcissus, Tretheway examines a vignette of her childhood. Her mother is still alive, and she is framed in this memory where Tretheway brings her mother spring flowers. She writes, “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” (7). Trethway shows us a memory of hers, where she is a child who wants, like most children do, to give her parents something, but nothing will ever amount to what her mom has sacrificed for her. Additionally, Tretheway shows how memories can be tainted, as at the end of her poem she suggests that those flowers, pieces of the land, were whispering the fate of her mother. In Glyph, Aberdeen 1913, Tretheway again shows childhood and the unnatural pressure for it to hold grief and suffering. Tretheway’s childhood, though tainted by loss, still afforded some moments of pleasure and flowers on the way home from school. In Glyph, Aberdeen 1913, we see black childhood at its most heart wrenchingly unnatural, and subsequently the complexity of the intersection of race and childhood. Tretheway writes of the man and child, “they pose as if to say Look, this is the outline of suffering: the child shouldering it– a mound like dirt heaped on a grave” (22). Tretheway uses these vignettes of collective black suffering in Mississippi to simultaneously memorialize the singular experience of her mother; an abused woman of color, as well as the soldiers in the Native Guard. The experiences are different, yet made alike by racism in the South. Tretheway opens the third part in her collection with this quote from Walt Whitman; “O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all dear to me!”.”
2. “Natasha Trethewey’s “Native Guard looks at her own life seemingly growing up in Mississippi, and it also looks at events such as the civil war. I think this is important because we are able to see into her life growing up in Mississippi, along with the civil war where Mississippi was one of the first states to succeed from the union. We are getting two different histories involving the state. I think reading these poems as a collection enables it to tell more of a longer story than just reading one poem by itself. Some of her poems such as “Pilgrimage” show Mississippi during the civil war when it was a confederate state. I enjoyed this poem because it was blunt. “The whole city is a grave” I can interpret this in a few ways. Obviously, there were battles fought here during the war and people died leaving behind bodies to make graves. In another way when the poem discusses a woman who wonders what will become of the state, I think it refers to Mississippi as a grave for the confederacy. Later in the poem it says, “A the museum we marvel at their clothes” In feel like this is a reference to how people still worship the confederacy today even though there is absolutely no need for that at all. People still fly rebel flags and such, so I feel that this poem touches on that as well. The other poem I chose to discuss was “Souther History” I think it speaks true on how history is taught in schools in the south. “Before the war, they were happy, he said” The teacher is discussing slaves and how he claims they were happy. “The slaves were clothed, fed, and better off under a master’s care” This is a prime example of how southerners tried to defend owning slaves. It was often taught through racial science that these slaves didn’t have the same brain function as whites, or they had smaller lungs and couldn’t breathe as well. They even used religion as an excuse to try to make it seem okay to own another human being. I think this poem does a great idea of showing this through a child’s eyes and to see the bewilderment of it. I think her poems about the civil war, and her poems about her life growing up biracial in a deep southern state show a great comparison of the two time periods. Her personal poems give a great look into the eyes of a child who was treated different due to her race, and how no matter the time period, this treatment still exists and continues to be a major issue in this country.”
3. “I found “Native Guard”, a collection of poems written by Natasha Trethewey, to be very interesting reading. I was fond of the way that Trethewey goes back and forth between the present and past through the usage of memory and history. I felt that she was able to fully establish a connection between these two things and it helped Trethewey to create more of a storyline. She does this not only with the connection between memory and history but also with the poems and writings that she introduces throughout the reading. I felt that the names of the poems, the subject matter of the poems, and the structure of the poems added more insight into the storyline. One of my favorite examples of this starts with the poem Trethewey wrote titled,” You Are Late”, in which she wrote about young black women arriving at the Greenwood Public Library for Negroes too late and reading the sign on the door “You Are Late”, which Trethewey states afterward “She’ll read the sign that I read: You Are Late.” (pg.24)
Trethewey then places the reader into what seems to read like diary entries from experiences of the Negro soldiers of the “Native Guard” (pg. 25). The transition between the poem “You Are Late” and the poems from “Native Guard” proved to be very interesting in the way that Trethewey used flashbacks between history and the present moment. Trethewey’s use of the poem “You Are Late” created a bridge between history and her childhood. In “You Are Late” Trethewey states “…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. (pg.24). To me, it seems as though Trethewey is trying to say that history repeats itself by continuously writing her connection to history. Not only that but Trethewey also comments on lost history, lineage, and generations of blacks.
In the poem, Southern History, Trethewey states “…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, bucked eyes, our textbooks grinning proof- a lie my teacher guarded. Silent so did I.” (pg.38) Personally, I responded to this poem because it discusses the underlying truth of how our ancestors’ stories and history are falsified and covered up with stereotypes and guilt. Trethewey also discussed this problem in school history lessons as well, which is still occurring today. I think that this connects directly to the history and stories of the Native Guard, whose stories were also forgotten. In the poem, South, Trethewey says “…their bodies swelled and blackened beneath the sun- unburied until earth’s green sheet pulled over them, unmarked by any headstones.” (Pg.46) Trethewey continues by stating ” Where the roads, buildings, and monuments are named to honor the Confederacy..” (pg.46) ”
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Previous Assignemnt Details: Share your reaction to Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey. Discuss the work as a whole and at least two individual poems. Your initial posting should be 450-500 words. Be sure to respond to the postings of at least three of your classmates. Below are some questions you might consider in writing about poems for this week:
Native Guard
Trethewey combines poems about her personal history with poems about American history, specifically about Black soldiers serving during the Civil War. What does she achieve by combining these two topics?
Normally we read poems in isolation; by reading these poems in the context of a collection, how does it affect your reception or reading of the poems?
How does Trethewey open up conversations about hidden racialized histories?
How do her poems explore the complexity of race, law, hatred, violence, and love?
What poem in the collection speaks to you the most about the invisibility of Black agency and history?
How does the illegal union of Trethewey’s parents affect her childhood and sense of self as represented in her poetry?
How does her experience as a daughter contribute to her poetry?
How does the death of her mother create feelings of guilt and loss in the poems?
What parallels do you see between the forgotten soldiers and Trethewey’s mother?
How does Trethewey bear witness to history, her mother’s story, and/or her own childhood?
Criteria Elements
General Quality Fully addresses the question(s) and stimulates substantial follow-up postings
Critical Thinking Rich in content; full of thought, insight, and analysis
Timeliness Posts in time for other students to read and respond to
Stylistics Few grammatical or stylistic errors
