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Monument: Poems New and Selected
Urgent new poems on race and gender inequality, and select poems drawing upon Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard, Congregation, and Thrall, from two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey.
Layering joy and urgent defiance―against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone―Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument , Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, and Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.
In this setting, each poem drawn from an “opus of classics both elegant and necessary,”* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet’s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.
*Academy of American Poets’ chancellor Marilyn Nelson
“[Trethewey’s poems] dig beneath the surface of history―personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago―to explore the human struggles that we all face.” ―James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress
Layering joy and urgent defiance―against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone―Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument , Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, and Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.
In this setting, each poem drawn from an “opus of classics both elegant and necessary,”* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet’s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.
*Academy of American Poets’ chancellor Marilyn Nelson
“[Trethewey’s poems] dig beneath the surface of history―personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago―to explore the human struggles that we all face.” ―James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 6, 2018
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About the author
Natasha Trethewey
41 books782 followersNatasha Trethewey is an American poet who was appointed United States Poet Laureate in June 2012; she began her official duties in September. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and she is the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
She is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where she also directs the Creative Writing Program.
Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, on April 26, 1966, Confederate Memorial Day, to Eric Trethewey and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, who were married illegally at the time of her birth, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws with Loving v. Virginia. Her birth certificate noted the race of her mother as "colored", and the race of her father as “Canadian”.
Trethewey's mother, a social worker, was part of the inspiration for Native Guard, which is dedicated to her memory. Trethewey's parents divorced when she was young and Turnbough was murdered in 1985 by her second husband, whom she had recently divorced, when Trethewey was 19 years old. Recalling her reaction to her mother's death, she said, "that was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not. I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened".
Natasha Trethewey's father is also a poet; he is a professor of English at Hollins University.
Trethewey earned her B.A. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995. In May 2010 Trethewey delivered the commencement speech at Hollins University and was awarded an honorary doctorate. She had previously received an honorary degree from Delta State University in her native Mississippi.
Structurally, her work combines free verse with more structured, traditional forms like the sonnet and the villanelle. Thematically, her work examines "memory and the racial legacy of America". Bellocq's Ophelia (2002), for example, is a collection of poetry in the form of an epistolary novella; it tells the fictional story a mixed-race prostitute who was photographed by E. J. Bellocq in early 20th-century New Orleans.
The American Civil War makes frequent appearances in her work. Born on Confederate Memorial Day—exactly 100 years afterwards—Trethewey explains that she could not have "escaped learning about the Civil War and what it represented", and that it had fascinated her since childhood. For example, Native Guard tells the story of the Louisiana Native Guards, an all-black regiment in the Union Army, composed mainly of former slaves who enlisted, that guarded the Confederate prisoners of war.
On June 7, 2012, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, named her the 19th US Poet Laureate. Billington said, after hearing her poetry at the National Book Festival, that he was "immediately struck by a kind of classic quality with a richness and variety of structures with which she presents her poetry … she intermixes her story with the historical story in a way that takes you deep into the human tragedy of it." Newspapers noted that unlike most poets laureate, Trethewey is in the middle of her career. She was also the first laureate to take up residence in Washington, D.C., when she did so in January 2013. On May 14, 2014, Tretheway delivered her final lecture to conclude her second term as US Poet Laureate.
(from Wikipedia)
She is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where she also directs the Creative Writing Program.
Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, on April 26, 1966, Confederate Memorial Day, to Eric Trethewey and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, who were married illegally at the time of her birth, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws with Loving v. Virginia. Her birth certificate noted the race of her mother as "colored", and the race of her father as “Canadian”.
Trethewey's mother, a social worker, was part of the inspiration for Native Guard, which is dedicated to her memory. Trethewey's parents divorced when she was young and Turnbough was murdered in 1985 by her second husband, whom she had recently divorced, when Trethewey was 19 years old. Recalling her reaction to her mother's death, she said, "that was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not. I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened".
Natasha Trethewey's father is also a poet; he is a professor of English at Hollins University.
Trethewey earned her B.A. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995. In May 2010 Trethewey delivered the commencement speech at Hollins University and was awarded an honorary doctorate. She had previously received an honorary degree from Delta State University in her native Mississippi.
Structurally, her work combines free verse with more structured, traditional forms like the sonnet and the villanelle. Thematically, her work examines "memory and the racial legacy of America". Bellocq's Ophelia (2002), for example, is a collection of poetry in the form of an epistolary novella; it tells the fictional story a mixed-race prostitute who was photographed by E. J. Bellocq in early 20th-century New Orleans.
The American Civil War makes frequent appearances in her work. Born on Confederate Memorial Day—exactly 100 years afterwards—Trethewey explains that she could not have "escaped learning about the Civil War and what it represented", and that it had fascinated her since childhood. For example, Native Guard tells the story of the Louisiana Native Guards, an all-black regiment in the Union Army, composed mainly of former slaves who enlisted, that guarded the Confederate prisoners of war.
On June 7, 2012, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, named her the 19th US Poet Laureate. Billington said, after hearing her poetry at the National Book Festival, that he was "immediately struck by a kind of classic quality with a richness and variety of structures with which she presents her poetry … she intermixes her story with the historical story in a way that takes you deep into the human tragedy of it." Newspapers noted that unlike most poets laureate, Trethewey is in the middle of her career. She was also the first laureate to take up residence in Washington, D.C., when she did so in January 2013. On May 14, 2014, Tretheway delivered her final lecture to conclude her second term as US Poet Laureate.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
May 10, 2020
Happy Mother’s Day. In my house, every day is supposed to be mother’s and Father’s Day but it doesn’t always work out that way. In honor of Mother’s Day I turned to poetry which I always enjoy. I admittedly am not a fan of either ebooks or audio and have finally finished my first ever ebook. With the libraries *still* closed, ebooks might become a new part of my reality, but for now I will stick to poetry and plays. That’s about all I can read on a device that is not a physical book. My lasting reminder of 2020 is that I have been able to bolster my personal library, purchasing books that I would have otherwise borrowed from my local library. Getting back to the task at hand, I have some go to poets, those who I have read all the volumes and memoirs they have published. Former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is one of them. While her work is hardly the soothing poetry I need now, her words are a mix of prose, history, and images that evoke a complicated mixing of races in the American south, the place of her birth.
Monument is taken from a number of Trethewey’s volumes including Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer, and Bellocq’s Ophelia. All speak of race in Mississippi, an issue that is still tricky to navigate. Trethewey is the product of a black mother and white father. They had to flee to Ohio to marry and lived for awhile in Canada because at the time interracial marriage was still illegal. Often times growing up, people thought that Trethewey’s mother was her maid. Not that the poet was light skinned, but lighter enough than her mother that in Mississippi in the 1970s, their relationship was considered problematic. In one grade at school in Gulfport, a white classmate was thrilled because she thought that Natasha was the third white student in the class. How little this girl actually knew, and a seven year old girl was in no position to correct her peer either. Trethewey knew that this girl would detest her presence in the class if she gave herself us as black. These interracial relationships are prevalent in each poem in this volume and hard to take all at once yet there is beauty in these words as they are Trethewey’s personal way of grieving.
Trethewey’s father left her mother and she later remarried. This was a mistake as this second husband murdered her. Trethewey was present but her life was spared. It is not mentioned here but after her mother was killed, she split time being raised by her maternal grandmother and father. These poems all pay homage to her mother. Over thirty years later, Trethewey still remembers and her mother’s image as well as the complicated race question is all over these pages. The words a black mother and her white daughter are repeated throughout the verses. Likewise, Trethewey’s father was in denial about Jefferson’s relationship with his slaves as she notes on a trip the two took to Monticello. Her father rationalizes Jefferson as a slave holder and then further justifies the relationship he had with his slaves because Sally Hemings was supposedly a quadroon rather than dark skinned. Over thirty years later, Trethewey’s father is still coming to terms with his own interracial marriage and wonders if he could have made it work in 1970s Mississippi. Trethewey notes that in the long run, probably not.
Hurricanes Camille and Katrina, slavery, and present day civil rights all make an appearance here. Each event is tied to the race question and inevitably back to Trethewey’s mother. The words are hard to digest but brilliant. This is just a sampling of Trethewey’s work but it is obvious that she is a gifted writer who has merited the accolades bestowed to her in life. Today Trethewey is a member of the English department of Northwestern University. She still misses her mother and mentions her in every poem she writes. Although not the most pleasant of images, the work of Natasha Trethewey is appropriate for Mother’s Day as it speaks of an unbroken love of a daughter for her mother. I am always on the lookout for Trethewey’s work. Hopefully next time I will get to read a physical copy.
4+ stars
Monument is taken from a number of Trethewey’s volumes including Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer, and Bellocq’s Ophelia. All speak of race in Mississippi, an issue that is still tricky to navigate. Trethewey is the product of a black mother and white father. They had to flee to Ohio to marry and lived for awhile in Canada because at the time interracial marriage was still illegal. Often times growing up, people thought that Trethewey’s mother was her maid. Not that the poet was light skinned, but lighter enough than her mother that in Mississippi in the 1970s, their relationship was considered problematic. In one grade at school in Gulfport, a white classmate was thrilled because she thought that Natasha was the third white student in the class. How little this girl actually knew, and a seven year old girl was in no position to correct her peer either. Trethewey knew that this girl would detest her presence in the class if she gave herself us as black. These interracial relationships are prevalent in each poem in this volume and hard to take all at once yet there is beauty in these words as they are Trethewey’s personal way of grieving.
Trethewey’s father left her mother and she later remarried. This was a mistake as this second husband murdered her. Trethewey was present but her life was spared. It is not mentioned here but after her mother was killed, she split time being raised by her maternal grandmother and father. These poems all pay homage to her mother. Over thirty years later, Trethewey still remembers and her mother’s image as well as the complicated race question is all over these pages. The words a black mother and her white daughter are repeated throughout the verses. Likewise, Trethewey’s father was in denial about Jefferson’s relationship with his slaves as she notes on a trip the two took to Monticello. Her father rationalizes Jefferson as a slave holder and then further justifies the relationship he had with his slaves because Sally Hemings was supposedly a quadroon rather than dark skinned. Over thirty years later, Trethewey’s father is still coming to terms with his own interracial marriage and wonders if he could have made it work in 1970s Mississippi. Trethewey notes that in the long run, probably not.
Hurricanes Camille and Katrina, slavery, and present day civil rights all make an appearance here. Each event is tied to the race question and inevitably back to Trethewey’s mother. The words are hard to digest but brilliant. This is just a sampling of Trethewey’s work but it is obvious that she is a gifted writer who has merited the accolades bestowed to her in life. Today Trethewey is a member of the English department of Northwestern University. She still misses her mother and mentions her in every poem she writes. Although not the most pleasant of images, the work of Natasha Trethewey is appropriate for Mother’s Day as it speaks of an unbroken love of a daughter for her mother. I am always on the lookout for Trethewey’s work. Hopefully next time I will get to read a physical copy.
4+ stars
March 21, 2021
[3.4] This is the first poetry volume I've read all the way through for decades. I was hoping that I would be swept away and then transformed, once again, into a daily poetry reader. Since I loved Tretheway's memoir, I thought this would be a great choice to start with.
But I had trouble settling into these poems and it took me almost 2 months to get through this slim collection. The personal poems about Trethewey's grief were those that resonated with me the most. Many of these poems are historical snapshots and didn't do much for me. My middling rating is probably more about me than the poems.
But I had trouble settling into these poems and it took me almost 2 months to get through this slim collection. The personal poems about Trethewey's grief were those that resonated with me the most. Many of these poems are historical snapshots and didn't do much for me. My middling rating is probably more about me than the poems.
March 24, 2019
I did not know about the subtext
of our story, that my father could imagine
Jefferson's words made flesh in my flesh--
It is notable that my CEO gave me this book. I do appreciate when people give me books to read, even the virtual recommendations on here are appreciated but there's an additional element considered about being handed a book. A coworker recently gave me The Ballad of Black Tom which I also enjoyed. Interesting, I suppose, as both books are anchored in race. Trethewey's verse is almost conversational yet jagged with anger and pain. There's a preoccupation with both history and the image, the latter invariably filtered through her interrogation of the male gaze. The idea of the display which isn't exactly natural nor will it fade with meaning. The history is fixed points scribbled on a commandeered journal. Notation as a record and a testament as well.
The poems also appear regional, affixed to the Gulf Coast with tidal musings on Human Bondage and the legacy of such, a posterity which drapes us all like the Deepwater Horizon tainted the shore. The quotation at the top of the review is from a backward glance at Jefferson, while walking at Monticello with her own white father.
of our story, that my father could imagine
Jefferson's words made flesh in my flesh--
It is notable that my CEO gave me this book. I do appreciate when people give me books to read, even the virtual recommendations on here are appreciated but there's an additional element considered about being handed a book. A coworker recently gave me The Ballad of Black Tom which I also enjoyed. Interesting, I suppose, as both books are anchored in race. Trethewey's verse is almost conversational yet jagged with anger and pain. There's a preoccupation with both history and the image, the latter invariably filtered through her interrogation of the male gaze. The idea of the display which isn't exactly natural nor will it fade with meaning. The history is fixed points scribbled on a commandeered journal. Notation as a record and a testament as well.
The poems also appear regional, affixed to the Gulf Coast with tidal musings on Human Bondage and the legacy of such, a posterity which drapes us all like the Deepwater Horizon tainted the shore. The quotation at the top of the review is from a backward glance at Jefferson, while walking at Monticello with her own white father.
January 21, 2019
Magnificent collection by Natasha Trethewey containing many poems that have appeared in earlier compilations as well as some new ones. Each is a gem, either an exploration of her own traumatic history, or of racial identity through the centuries based on history as art. Easy to see why she has received so many accolades, so much honor. She writes most poignantly of her mother, dead at only 41 at the hands of an ex-husband, her stepfather. Her poems while lyrical and expansive also reveal a certain earthiness that renders them original and accessible. Exquisite.
September 30, 2018
Over the years I’ve read each of Natasha Tretheway’s collections in isolation, enjoying to greater or lesser degree each one. In Monument, however, experiencing these poems together and allowing them to tell their collective stories as a whole, I have a completely different impression of and reaction to Trethewey’s body of work. Ordinarily, I’m not a huge fan of Selected Poems because they seem like a repackaging instead of something original and new. This may be the first time that I find the whole greater than its parts. The story Trethewey weaves of history and race and family and violence is both deeply personal and deeply universal. Her poetry is prosy while also being slow, lyrical, and deep. Her poetry is a long, thick, and tangled thread in the American experience, in voice, in language, in story, and those who take the time to experience this collection will be better for it.
October 21, 2024
Monument is a retrospective collection of Natasha Trethewey's poetry from 2000-2010 plus new poems. It includes excerpts from earlier collections and it reprints Native Guard: Poems in full. Native Guard was my first introduction to Trethewey's work, I read it after she won the Pulitzer. I believe I understand it more now than I did during my first reading of it. I was so intrigued by the poems from Bellocq's Ophelia that I instantly bought it, I may do the same with her collection Thrall. Both were fascinating and she played around with different forms of poetry. Her poems tend to be about being mixed race (white and Black), the South, history, memory, grief, and her relationship with her mother who was murdered by her stepfather, which serves as a precursor to her memoir Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir.
November 15, 2018
This was a collection of some of her earlier works into a really stunning book of poems. Many are in memory of her mother, who was murdered by her stepfather. The other poems deal largely with race and her experiences growing up as an inter-racial child in the south and how others perceive her now. Finally, really beautiful phrases evoke strong images of the past in her poems relating to the service of black soldiers in the civil war.
April 3, 2022
i get to meet natasha tretheway in a few days & i am probably going to cry. this book has reawakened my perception of craft & transformed my understand of poetry in response/how that response poetry can be alive through perspective without being trite or losing the ekphrasis.
September 15, 2022
Yeah, modern poetry…still doesn’t do it for me. I do try, though. This is a collection by a much lauded, much awarded poet. It was…well, interesting. Very personal since poetry these days seems to be a very intimate confessional sort of thing.
This collection was mostly about the author’s mother who was murdered at 40, author’s father -still alive, author’s family in general - one of those brave early biracial marriages, and, author’s race – biracial but able to pass for white. There were some other motifs, mostly about race, just less personal, and more historically based ones.
Overall, didn’t do much for me. Not the right sort of intimacy. Almost like oversharing, but that’s what poetry seems to be. Anyway, others seem to really like it, so there’s that. Pulitzer, no less. What does one classics loving amateur knows.
This collection was mostly about the author’s mother who was murdered at 40, author’s father -still alive, author’s family in general - one of those brave early biracial marriages, and, author’s race – biracial but able to pass for white. There were some other motifs, mostly about race, just less personal, and more historically based ones.
Overall, didn’t do much for me. Not the right sort of intimacy. Almost like oversharing, but that’s what poetry seems to be. Anyway, others seem to really like it, so there’s that. Pulitzer, no less. What does one classics loving amateur knows.
February 6, 2019
Haunting.
March 17, 2020
This book would have been five stars if it was all grief poetry, honestly. Trethewey threads questions and delights and hurts around her status as mixed race. She does this through a couple different types of poems—poems focused on grief, poems depicting scenes from her own life, and poems that explore art or history. I loved the grief and scenes poems: in "Shooting Wild" she writes a sonnet about her mother learning to be quiet in her own house, and in "Meditation at Decatur Square" she flows from discussing statues to remembering her mother's trial to telling a story about her brother and bringing it all together.
Natasha Trethewey is a cathartic poet for me in that she writes about grief and a challenging poet in she raises many questions about race from a perspective I haven't thought about much.
Natasha Trethewey is a cathartic poet for me in that she writes about grief and a challenging poet in she raises many questions about race from a perspective I haven't thought about much.
December 8, 2018
This collection is one of the better poetry collections I have read in some time. The author's mixed race heritage is fruitful ground for exploring what it means to be human and parts of others. The poetic themes are universal, despite the specifics.
Tretheway also does something I enjoy is poetry is poetic descriptions of visual art. Maybe the biggest downside of the book is I had to Google the paintings she was writing about, rather than having them included with the poem.
Tretheway also does something I enjoy is poetry is poetic descriptions of visual art. Maybe the biggest downside of the book is I had to Google the paintings she was writing about, rather than having them included with the poem.
May 23, 2020
I love her poetry so much.
August 31, 2019
What a privilege to get to read this collection.
February 10, 2021
It had some beautiful stand out poems. It definitely hit my feelings at times. I could not just get into it. I am not a big poetry person but tried to spread my wings a bit. I think it was good and many will be moved by this piece.
June 21, 2018
Trethewey is a master of narrative, combining the personal and historic with uncanny wisdom and feeling. With this selected, it's possible to see the arc of her thematic development, experience her unique representation of race, family, and geography. In "Waterborne," she writes,
...trauma lives in the sea
of my body, awash in the waters
of forgetting. In every resilient blade
I see the ancestors, my mother’s face.
...trauma lives in the sea
of my body, awash in the waters
of forgetting. In every resilient blade
I see the ancestors, my mother’s face.
December 9, 2025
kind of a bummer that the last section is not a separate book of poetry, because having read all the rest of her poems, this collection was for the most part just flipping through the pages in search of the poems I have yet to discover
January 28, 2025
I wanted to enjoy Monument by Natasha Trethewey more than I did. While I did find some of the poems powerful and connected with them, there were also many that just didn't hit me in a meaningful way.
The main reason for this is that the bulk of poems here seem to be reflecting on photographs, painting, or historical events. I just failed to really connect with these works. Even trying to look up the photo, painting, or event didn't really help me enjoy the poem more. Since there are a number of these poems in the collection, it meant that I didn't connect with a good number of poems.
A secondary reason is that the experience of Natasha Trethewey is very different than my own. She is the daughter of a white father and a black mother raised in a time that was even more hostile to that than now, at least for the moment anyhow. Both of her parents are also dead, with her mother being a victim to a murder committed by her mother's second husband. Even with this lack of connection to some of it, the poems that spoke of her own grief through the lens of her own experiences and not some other medium were still powerful. Poems like Genus Narcissus, What the Body Can Say, Myth, Incident, and Illuminations are just some of the ones that I found very powerful even without having that shared experience.
Monument was just a mix of poems that I really liked and ones that just didn't hit me very much. I realize that this may be due to my own limitations on appreciating poetry and not the skill of the poet, but that is all that I really have to go on.
The main reason for this is that the bulk of poems here seem to be reflecting on photographs, painting, or historical events. I just failed to really connect with these works. Even trying to look up the photo, painting, or event didn't really help me enjoy the poem more. Since there are a number of these poems in the collection, it meant that I didn't connect with a good number of poems.
A secondary reason is that the experience of Natasha Trethewey is very different than my own. She is the daughter of a white father and a black mother raised in a time that was even more hostile to that than now, at least for the moment anyhow. Both of her parents are also dead, with her mother being a victim to a murder committed by her mother's second husband. Even with this lack of connection to some of it, the poems that spoke of her own grief through the lens of her own experiences and not some other medium were still powerful. Poems like Genus Narcissus, What the Body Can Say, Myth, Incident, and Illuminations are just some of the ones that I found very powerful even without having that shared experience.
Monument was just a mix of poems that I really liked and ones that just didn't hit me very much. I realize that this may be due to my own limitations on appreciating poetry and not the skill of the poet, but that is all that I really have to go on.
December 28, 2021
Picture Gallery
"In a tight corner of the house, we’d kept
the light-up portraits of Kennedy and King,
side by side, long after the bulbs burned out—
cords tangling on the floor, and the patina
of rust slowly taking the filigreed frames.
Then, my grandmother wanted more Art —
something beautiful to look at, she said.
At the fabric store she bought bolts of cloth
printed with natural scenes—far-off views
of mountains, owls on snowy boughs.
I donated the scenic backdrop that came
with a model horse—a yellowed vista
of wheat fields, a wagon, and one long road.
Back home, we gathered pinecones
and branches, staples and glue, then hung
the fabric, big as windows, in the dark
hallway. The fresh boughs we stapled on
stuck out in relief. We breathed green air,
and the owls—instead—peered in at us,
our lives suddenly beautiful, then."
"In a tight corner of the house, we’d kept
the light-up portraits of Kennedy and King,
side by side, long after the bulbs burned out—
cords tangling on the floor, and the patina
of rust slowly taking the filigreed frames.
Then, my grandmother wanted more Art —
something beautiful to look at, she said.
At the fabric store she bought bolts of cloth
printed with natural scenes—far-off views
of mountains, owls on snowy boughs.
I donated the scenic backdrop that came
with a model horse—a yellowed vista
of wheat fields, a wagon, and one long road.
Back home, we gathered pinecones
and branches, staples and glue, then hung
the fabric, big as windows, in the dark
hallway. The fresh boughs we stapled on
stuck out in relief. We breathed green air,
and the owls—instead—peered in at us,
our lives suddenly beautiful, then."
August 26, 2020
I love Tretheway's poetry, which is dedicated to her mother and to the South, both issues dear to me and present in my own poetry. Monument is truly a monument to her mother, who was murdered by her second husband. Tretheway's deep struggle to come to terms with her mother's life and death is reminiscent of my struggle to offer love and respect to my own mother, whose kindness, gentleness, and depth of character did not deserve the pain and destruction she experienced at the hands of three of her four husbands.
Here are a few favorite lines from Monument, of many:
...these willowy reeds?
How can I see anything
but this: how trauma lives in the sea
of my body, awash in the waters
of forgetting. In every resilient blade
I see the ancestors, my mother's face.
Here are a few favorite lines from Monument, of many:
...these willowy reeds?
How can I see anything
but this: how trauma lives in the sea
of my body, awash in the waters
of forgetting. In every resilient blade
I see the ancestors, my mother's face.
Read
May 5, 2021Easy 5/5
I'm honestly so sad that my poetry class is finally over. That being said, WOW, what a wonderful poet and collection to end on. Monument's collection of poems is absolutely stunning, the poetry is beautiful, hunting, and bittersweet. I had the pleasure of hearing Trethewey read some of her works and give background on their inspiration, which only made reading them that much more enjoyable. This is probably one of my favorite collections from this class, hands down, and everyone interested in poetry should read it!!!
I'm honestly so sad that my poetry class is finally over. That being said, WOW, what a wonderful poet and collection to end on. Monument's collection of poems is absolutely stunning, the poetry is beautiful, hunting, and bittersweet. I had the pleasure of hearing Trethewey read some of her works and give background on their inspiration, which only made reading them that much more enjoyable. This is probably one of my favorite collections from this class, hands down, and everyone interested in poetry should read it!!!
August 3, 2021
Day 3 of the #SealyChallenge. Trethewey is a graceful and deft artist whose images transport the reader through time and emotion.
Some of my favorite moments:
one does not bury the mother’s body in the ground but in the chest, or—like you— you carry her corpse on your back.
Goodbye is the waving map of your palm, is a stone on my tongue.
What is home but a cradle of the past?
Some of my favorite moments:
one does not bury the mother’s body in the ground but in the chest, or—like you— you carry her corpse on your back.
Goodbye is the waving map of your palm, is a stone on my tongue.
What is home but a cradle of the past?
December 23, 2020
I'm not always a fan of selected poems, but in this case Trethewey has compiled her works in a way that shapes a narrative across time not achievable with her individual books. The new poems are daunting, and revisiting the prior ones is a welcome opportunity.
October 23, 2020
Natasha Trethewey picks some really heavy topics for her poems and handles them beautifully.
June 13, 2021
Why do I never read poetry?! This was so beautiful.
June 3, 2022
Amazing.
August 5, 2023
In a way, I’m glad I didn’t know this includes excepts from her other collections, because now I get to find all of those and read them, too.
September 23, 2023
Floored
December 7, 2023
Poetry at its finest! Trethewey is masterful!
August 6, 2020
Monuments: Poems New and Selected -Natasha Trethewey
5 stars
Natasha Trethewey has a memoir that will be released at the end of this month. That book’s description caught my attention on several recent lists of books by black authors. I knew her name. How did I know her name? She is a poet. I read a lot of poetry, but I couldn’t quite place her in my memory. I looked for her work at Poetry Foundation (poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-tr...). After reading a few poems from the website, I was hooked.
Trethewey is a former US poet laureate. She won a Pulitzer prize in 2007 for her third book of poems, Native Guard. Like Trevor Noah, she was also ‘born a crime’ in 1966 a year before the ruling in Loving v. Virginia.
As the title indicates, Monuments: Poems New and Selected is a collection. They are meditations, examinations of race, both personally and historically. They are autobiographical; grief stricken examinations of her mother’s murder by an abusive stepfather, personal explorations of a mixed race childhood. Trethewey is an accomplished poet, but I didn’t read these poems thinking about how well she handled line and meter, image and paradox. The content of these poems is accessible. They are worthy of rereading and further thought, but they also have an immediate impact.
I look forward to reading Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir when it is published a week from now. I’ve also ordered copies of Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard because neither of those books, by this award winning poet, are available from either of the public library systems that I can access.
5 stars
Natasha Trethewey has a memoir that will be released at the end of this month. That book’s description caught my attention on several recent lists of books by black authors. I knew her name. How did I know her name? She is a poet. I read a lot of poetry, but I couldn’t quite place her in my memory. I looked for her work at Poetry Foundation (poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-tr...). After reading a few poems from the website, I was hooked.
Trethewey is a former US poet laureate. She won a Pulitzer prize in 2007 for her third book of poems, Native Guard. Like Trevor Noah, she was also ‘born a crime’ in 1966 a year before the ruling in Loving v. Virginia.
As the title indicates, Monuments: Poems New and Selected is a collection. They are meditations, examinations of race, both personally and historically. They are autobiographical; grief stricken examinations of her mother’s murder by an abusive stepfather, personal explorations of a mixed race childhood. Trethewey is an accomplished poet, but I didn’t read these poems thinking about how well she handled line and meter, image and paradox. The content of these poems is accessible. They are worthy of rereading and further thought, but they also have an immediate impact.
I look forward to reading Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir when it is published a week from now. I’ve also ordered copies of Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard because neither of those books, by this award winning poet, are available from either of the public library systems that I can access.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews