Native Guard: Poems [Hardcover]

Natasha Trethewey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2006

Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards -- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life.

The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Trethewey (Domestic Work) draws on the life of her deceased mother and on the history of Mississippi, where the poet and her mother's family grew up, to limn a multiracial South and her own multiracial heritage. One poem tries to preserve her mother's memory ("certain the sounds I make/ are enough to call someone home"); the title poem's set of linked sonnets, where the last line of each one becomes the first line of the next, presents black Union soldiers who "keep/ white men as prisoners—rebel soldiers,/ would-be masters." A pantoun remembers the night Trethewey's family discovered a burning cross on her lawn; the concluding poem condenses the poet's mixed—and compelling—feelings about "Mississippi, state that made a crime// of me—mulatto, half-breed, native—/ in my native land, this place they'll bury me." (Mar.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Trethewey's exacting and resonant poetry is rooted in the shadow side of American history. In her first two collections, she empathically dramatizes the lives of women of color. Here she enters the arena of war and unveils a harrowing betrayal. In commanding, bayonet-sharp lyrics, Trethewey matches states of mind with states of nature and rigorously distills fact and feeling into loaded phrases and philosophical metaphors as she tells the terrible story of the Native Guard. Newly freed from slavery, the men were mustered in 1862 in Louisiana to become the first Union army regiment of black soldiers. But the courageous black troops who fell in combat were left unburied, and the black soldiers who continued fighting with valor and conviction were fired upon by their white comrades. Moving from grim historical events to personal history, Trethewey tells the story of a white man and a black woman who marry, even though their union is illegal in their home state of Mississippi. There a daughter is born, a poet in the making, profoundly attuned to the tragedies of racial strife. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2nd edition (March 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618604634
• ISBN-13: 978-0618604630
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #901,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Natasha Trethewey is the author of two previously published collections, Belloq's Ophelia and Domestic Work. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, she was the recipient of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at Emory University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shock, Beauty, Sorrow, in a Lyric Sleeve, May 22, 2007

By 

Jan E. Vanstavern (Portland, ORE) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Native Guard: Poems (Paperback)

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for teachers: cross curriculum gem, April 22, 2007

By 

Pegeen (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Native Guard: Poems (Paperback)

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.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Native Guard, April 10, 2006

By 

Jerry David Madden "david madden author of Ab... (Black Mountain, North Carolina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Native Guard: Poems (Hardcover)

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.