So, we now have a new US poet laureate, Natasha Trethewey. Comments, anybody?According to the Mercury News, she is "the nation's first poet laureate to hail from the South since the initial one—Robert Penn Warren—was named by the Library of Congress in 1986."
Some selected poems.
4 comments:
I have enjoyed what I have read of her work. Her writing is accessible and poignant.
She has such a soft way about her writing (so far of what I have read as well), it is gentle, sublte, touching, and at the same time important and yes poignant. She is inspiring. A new favorite of mine. :-)
I, for one, welcome our new poetry overlord...MFA, MFA, MFA! Okay, so her work is nice and safe and not very interesting, the perfect safe choice to make sure no one reads poetry.
Rocky Dilemma
We all have prejudiced associations
That, hard as we may try, we can’t control –
A vocal cue will prompt improper relations
We’d like to bury in a psychic hole;
We bite our tongues, avoiding confrontations,
And bit by bit we learn the proper role:
That out of all our inner storm and stress
We chose what to express – and not express.
Natasha Trethewey has now become
The poet laureate – and no Celt more than I
Is with her now within the seething scrum
Of Yankee English, or more approves her high
Award, aware of that remaining hum
That subjugated languages supply
In assonance, inflection, or in rhythm --
Depending on the tones surviving with them.
But those are not the accents that I hear
When someone says the poet laureate’s name –
And those are not the accents that will sear
My writhing inner self with childish shame;
The accent that comes clearly to my ear,
With foreign vowels I desperately disclaim
In prejudice that I cannot deny:
Natasha saying “Moose and squirrel must die!”
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