later remarried. Trethewey’s stepfather mur-
dered her mother several years later, in 1985.
Trethewey was nineteen at the time. Trethewey’s
biracial identity as well as her mother’s murder
are topics that Trethewey often examines in her
poems.
Trethewey earned her bachelor’s in English
from the University of Georgia; her master’s in
poetry from Hollins University in Roanoke, Vir-
ginia (where her father was a professor); and an
MFA in poetry from the University of Massa-
chusetts. Trethewey taught as an assistant pro-
fessor of English at Auburn University in
Alabama before taking on the professorial
position of Phillis Wheatley Distinguished
Chair of Poetry at Emory University in Decatur,
Georgia.
Trethewey’s work has appeared in many
different publications, includingThe Best Amer-
ican Poetry(2000 and 2003),Agni,American
Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review,
Kenyon Review,New England Review, and the
Southern Review. Trethewey’s first collection of
poems,Domestic Work(2000), won the 2001
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book
Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for
Poetry. Her second collection,Bellocq’s Ophelia
(2002), received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of
Arts and Letters Book Prize, was a finalist for
the Academy of American Poets’ James Laugh-
lin and Lenore Marshall prizes, and was named a
2003 Notable Book by the American Library
Association. Her 2006 collection,Native Guard,
won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.Poem Summary
If this war be forgotten, I ask in the name of all
things sacred what shall men remember?
Frederick Douglass
November 1862
Truth be told, I do not want to forget
anything of my former life: the landscape’s
song of bondage—dirge in the river’s throat
where it churns into the Gulf, wind in trees
choked with vines. I thought to carry with me 5
want of freedom though I had been freed,
remembrance not constant recollection.
Yes: I was born a slave, at harvest time,
in the Parish of Ascension; I’ve reached
thirty-three with history of one younger 10
inscribed upon my back. I now use ink
to keep record, a closed book, not the lure
of memory—flawed, changeful—that dulls the
lash
for the master, sharpens it for the slave.December 1862
For the slave, having a master sharpens 15
the bend into work, the way the sergeant
moves us now to perfect battalion drill,
dress parade. Still, we’re called supply units
not infantry—and so we dig trenches,
haul burdens for the army no less heavy 20
than before. I heard the colonel call it
nigger work.Half rations make our work
familiar still. We take those things we need
from the Confederates’ abandoned homes:
salt, sugar, even this journal, near full 25Natasha Trethewey(Logan Mock-Bunting / Getty Images)
Native Guard