Customer Reviews

Domestic Work

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

Domestic Work is that rare creation, a collection that will appeal to non-poets as well as to the most dedicated student of poetry. That's because Trethewey uses her translucent talent to create poems that are clear, poems that say something interesting, poems that stay with you. If you've never thought you would want to read a book of poetry, start here. If you've worked on your poetry craft for years and want to savor a master poet, buy this book. If you want to experience first-hand the special joy and pain of being mixed race, Trethewey will lead you to understand. Any poetry collection that doesn't include Domestic Work isn't complete.

"Domestic Work," by Natasha Trethewey, is the essence of well-crafted poetry. Each poem, of "Domestic Work," maintains delicate balances of "literal" meaning as well as "aesthetic" or "thematic" meaning. The thoughtful word choices, in Trethewey's work, depict vivid backdrops of sights, smells, textures and sounds. The well-chosen adjectives do not 'crowd' or distract from the themes -- both literal and aesthetic. With various foci and themes, the poems of "Domestic Work" truly beckon the reader to perform internal "domestic work" -- mentally, spiritually and emotionally.

Natasha Trethewey has won the Grolier Poetry Prize and her individual pieces have been widely published in a variety of places. Domestic Work is the debut collection of her poetry and will well serve to introduce her work to a whole new audience of appreciative readers. Housekeeping: We mourn the broken things, chair legs/wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,/the threadbare clothes. We work the magic/of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes./We save what we can, melt small pieces/of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones/for sou. Beating rugs against the house,/we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading/across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw/the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs/out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie./I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,/listen for passing cars. All day we watch/for the mail, some news from a distant place.

I have long followed Natasha Trethewey's work in the literary magazines. Her signature style, a simplicity of syntax and vivid imagery fused with powerful voice, is one of elegance. Trethewey uses the historical, both History and personal history, as a means to bring the personal alive. Hers is not the rambling and rambunctious voice of the Confessional, and her voice rings more true because of that. A stellar student of rhetoric, Trethewey realizes that in order to bring the reader to understanding one must give the reader the means to see and feel (to encounter) and not simply confess. I am thrilled to have published poems by Ms. Trethewey in the past, including the final poem in this collection. She is one of the poets in her generation to whom I look for striking work. And time and time again, she delivers.

I've never been a big fan of poetry. While there are a few well written poems that I have understood and enjoyed in life, most just seemed like, um, gobbledy-gook on paper. Maybe this stems from the way we teach poetry in this country, but that's a topic for discussion on another day.

These poems of Natasha Trethewey's, though, really speak to me. After hearing an interview with the author my interest was picqued, and so I bought her Native Guard book. I enjoy the voices and points of view that I hear in those poems, but these in Domestic Work are very poignant. I can imagine a way of life that I know very little about, other than stories my great-grandmother told me when I was a little girl. Trethewey's imagery is superb - she creates portraits with her words, and then gives us a little more by telling us what SHE sees these characters doing right before and after this snapshot of the lives they lead. This book goes straight to the top of my (VERY short) poetry list.

This is a wonderfully lucid and evocative first book, with crystalline imagery, full-bodied pathos and sensuality. Ripe, earthy, plain-spoken beauty confirms this new poet's gifts, for lyric precision and emotional honesty, on every page.

Natasha Trethewey, the poetess, writes a memory poem on every page. As I read each poem in "doMESTIC WORK, I realized these poems were memories and celebrations of hard working African Americans. The poems are so special and so beautiful I had to look at the poems in a personal way. Natasha Trethewey's poetry made me cry, smile, laugh and ponder my life. I remember my mother using Dixie Peach on my hair. To keep our kitchen cool while straightening my hair my mother kept the back door open. Every once in a while a cool breeze would come through the door. The cool breeze did not keep my mother from sweating. I would turn around and see the the beads of sweat on her upper lip. Our neighbors would say " she can fix some bad hair."

Natasha Trethewey, with her poetry, snapped a photo of the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart. She also wrote about my mother's masectomy. I have heard no one describe how it felt to see my mother pin bundled handkerchiefs inside her dress to appear as her missing breast. My mother was not a complainer. Whatever she felt after that operation she did not share. She held it inside of her heart. I'm sure she must have cried at night in her pillow. She would never have wanted to worry my father. Indeed, Natasha Trethewey writes a memorable book of poetry. dOMESTIC WORK by Natasha Trethewey is a winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

This is well-written, honest poetry, with its own sound. Its pleasures are traditional, and no less satisfying for it. One wonders why the poet only writes about what's past, though. Everyone writes about the past, of course, but a whole book of it begins to feel a bit like an evasion.

Natasha Trethewey's first collection is priceless evidence that poetry is indeed an art that speaks in a language everyone can understand and appreciate. Ms. Trethewey's poems exhibit a comfort with the everyday simplicities and complications of life -- from the sometime necessity of taking on more than one or two jobs to support one's family, to the harsh beauty to be found in sweat that dots a mother's face, and even to the faces of men and women known only through photographs, their stories outlined in the stance of their bodies, the narrowing of their eyes. She is not only at ease with exploring these domestic avenues, she is genuinely interested in them, in seeking out the uniqueness behind each individual experience she encounters. With childhood memory raising its shy hand to share its trial-and-error musings, to the refined quiet of works like "Limen," and "Carpenter Bee," this book showcases almost every important moment that can happen in a lifetime and treats each with dignity, grace, and reverence.

These poems seem tense, circumscribed, hemmed in. Although not strictly speaking "nostalgic" they come too close. There is a cramped, careful almost fussy feeling to the writing. Why write poetry to this effect?