Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Shock, Beauty, Sorrow, in a Lyric Sleeve May 22, 2007
Jan E. Vanstavern (Portland, ORE)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is one of the best new poetry books I've read in years: from the haunting and surprising poems of elegy to the author's mother, in the opening section (including a hymn!) to the middle section's integration of Southern history with personal fact, to the striking end section's reflections on personal history, race, and the impact of being biracial in the South--this is an intricate, accessible, beautiful book. And, the range of forms and subtle but powerful techniques the author uses make this the most unified varied body of work since, maybe, the Beatles made the White Album.
for teachers: cross curriculum gem April 22, 2007
Middle School Teacher (SF CA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I recommend this book to middle and high school teachers of Lit and History -- a unique approach to history that will grab some kids otherwise just sitting, and a very accessible type of poetry for lit analysis and discussion. Select poems, and parts of poems as you see fit for your audience, but I found it a very good collection for a teacher -- and a a very thought-provoking read.
Native Guard April 11, 2006
Jerry David Madden (baton rouge, louisiana)
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
Civil War times, civil rights times, space age times are woven into a tapestry that trembles with grief, rage, and triumph. Civil War poetry worthy at last of the highest awards.
Linda Jo Smith Reviews April 9, 2008
Linda Jo Smith
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Native Guard
by Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard is a superb example of storytelling through poetry. Her seamless imagery flows like lyrical essays inviting you into her world of "southern living" as seen by a woman whose mother was black and father white; a product of the infamous unwritten law of the two races mixing in the 1950's.
Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, there is no denying that Trethewey has a distinctive style and demands the attention of word artists. The title poem, Native Guard, is not only a poignant excerpt of Civil War history buried in the hidden archives of the south, Trethewey professes the contributions soldiers of African decent who served this country in the name of freedom for all men.
Native Guard opens with a story/poem of the disappointment of her mother at 16, who left "the dirt roads of Mississippi" on a train to California to meet her father only to find him nowhere in sight. Trethewey sweetly illustrates the torment of physical abuse by her stepfather, mourns the passing of her mother, the cross burning in her front yard, and the beauty of the South with all its degeneracy. Her stories flow in sonnets, a pantoum, and a verse form I have yet to identify illustrated in "Myth" (page 14) which left me awestruck. Her poetry exudes a gentle anger that is soothed with a balm of historical lessons.
Native Guard is familial history and southern history. Trethewey provides notes for the epigraphs she used as well as the sources used to create the title poem "Native Guard."
I highly recommend purchasing this book, if for no other reason, for the fact that the sister won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry! I only wish I counld have purchased the first edition!
"Turning away from the city, as one turns, forgetting, from the past-" December 6, 2007
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Weighted with temperament and the presence of graveyards, Trethewey paints vivid images of a past aware of its own history and the death of loved ones:
"It rained the whole time we were laying her down:
Rained from church to grave when we put her down.
The suck of mud at our feet was a hollow sound.
I wander now among names of the dead.
My mother's name, stone pillow for my head."
(Graveyard Blues)
Finding portents in simple childhood acts, the more mature poet replays such impulses in a new light:
"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."
(Genus Narcissus)
Bi-racial, the poet blends the spirit of her parents with the inevitability of their destinies and the legacy to their child:
"Already the words are changing. She is changing
from colored to negro, black still years ahead.
This is 1966- she is married to a white man-
And there are more names for what grows inside her."
(My Mother Dreams Another Country)
Recounting the discoveries of childhood with a history in the south- war and miscegenation- I am struck by the poet's embrace of time and place, the troubled years of war and the ubiquitous presence of race in daily life; yet she instinctively draws beauty where there is none, an intimate awareness of her parentage and position in a black and white world she treads so intuitively. There is much to be learned simply by listening to Trethewey's words, caught in the magic of her introspective nature. Luan Gaines/ 2007.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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