ago denied the possibility that black people were
human, now have to trust that this black soldier
will write to their loved ones the personal desires
that they are expressing. The white men must
learn to trust this man who was once a slave,
who was beaten with a whip and treated like a
mule, with their most intimate feelings. They
must open their hearts before this man, whom
they once thought did not even own a heart.
The poem ends on another ironic note.
Although the speaker writes letters to the loved
ones of the deceased, he is told not to tell them
the whole truth. There is an understanding
among the military leaders that the details of
war should not be shared with those who have
not experienced the horrors. If the full truth of
war were to be revealed to all, what would hap-
pen? Would people become alarmed and upset
and demand that no more wars be fought? If
they were to learn of the massacres that hap-
pened while the soldiers waved the white flag of
surrender, would people then declare the war
unfair? If they were to know that animals ate
the remains of their loved ones, would they
demand that laws be made to stop all future
wars? Were these the concerns of the generals
of this war when they demanded that secrets be
kept? Were they saying that war is so brutal that
even they cannot admit to the truth? Is the most
pointed irony revealed when the poet repeats the
poem’s final phrase? Is some truth too difficult
to be swallowed? If history does not record truth,
what does it record?
Source:Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on ‘‘Native Guard,’’ in
Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.
Pearl Amelia McHaney
In the following excerpt from an interview,
McHaney and Trethewey discuss the poet’s 2007
Pulitzer Prize–winning collection of poetry,
Native Guard.
...Trethewey:When I first started thinking
about writingNative Guard,it was my interest in
the history of the Louisiana Native Guards that
got me going. I had gone out to visit my grand-
mother in Gulfport, right after I started my first
job at Auburn University. I took her out to lunch
at a restaurant on the beach and I was talking to
her about a creative writing assignment that I
was going to give my students in which you get
them to write about a time when a relative met
someone famous. I was telling her that I was
going to do this assignment, too, about her
story, about the time her brother, my great-
uncle, met Al Capone. Uncle Hubert was a bell-
hop at a hotel on the beach, and he shook Al
Capone’s hand. Al Capone used to go down
there when he was running a gambling joint out
of the fort at Ship Island. As I am telling my
grandmother this, there’s a woman who is listen-
ing the whole time to our conversation. And I
think it is particularly important to mention
because of what she said that this is a white
woman listening to our conversation. And as
she gets up to leave the restaurant, she leans
over and she says, ‘‘I think there is something
else you need to know about Ship Island.’’ It was
very much like she was saying, ‘‘There’s this
other history about these black soldiers that
you should know as part of your history as
well,’’ and so she told me about them. I went
right away to the Gulfport Public library to try
to look up something about them. And the first
thing I found was a small mention in someone’s
M.A. thesis. And then later on of course I found
the full length monograph by James G. Hol-
landsworth that I mention in the Notes in the
book as well as the published diary of the colonel
who was stationed there that C. P. Weaver
edited. But I was interested in this because I
had been going out to that island my whole life
and the park rangers don’t mention anything
about the black presence on the island. There
isn’t any marker mentioning the Native Guards
or their presence the way there is for the Con-
federate soldiers who were imprisoned there.
And that suggested to me a kind of historical
erasure from the manmade monumental land-
scape. I was interested in telling that story, tell-
ing a fuller version of our story as Americans in
this pivotal moment in history.
McHaney: You said that originally you thought
youwereworkingonpoemsthatwouldleadtotwo
separate books, about the Louisiana Native GuardsI THINK WRITING SOME OF THE ELEGIES AND
PERHAPS EVEN THINKING ABOUT MY PLACE IN THE
SOUTH HAD A LOT TO DO WITH APPROACHING THE
ANNIVERSARY OF MY MOTHER’S DEATH.’’Native Guard