Analysis of poems in the Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Tretheway's collection of poems titled ‘Native Guard’ is a deeply emphatic account of instances in her life and her past that revolve around themes of death, family, prejudice, and freedom. These themes are hinted at throughout the poem weaved in with the distinct unique idea present in each section. After the first read, the difference of each section is very visible-the first chapter of the book is about her mother, second about the Civil War and the history of her town, and the final deals with her personal identity as a mixed-race woman. The famous phrase ‘life is a journey’ is brought put in her first poem in section I, titled Southern Crescent. The poem is able to effectively bring out how close Trethewey and her mother are; describing two instances of disappointment at the hands of two men (her mother’s father and husband) shows that the lives of Tretheway and her mom seem complete without male presence and they seem optimistic about the final train ride. Although they are close, the repetition of ‘holes’ in Graveyard Blues could represent the numerous things she didn’t know or understand about her mother, an epiphany she has after her mother's funeral. We learn about the domestic violence that existed in her house 'step-father’s fists' and the reason for her mother's death. In the second section, she is able to write from the point of view of someone in the Civil War. She can feel her life being intertwined with the spirits of the lives of the soldiers that fought for freedom in the South. The last line of each verse in the Native Guard poem in Section II becomes the first line in the following verse, making the poem flow smoothly and keeping the reader glued to the book-‘his story intersects with my own- oh how history intersects-my own’. The final section of the book deals with the discrimination she faced growing up. She makes an allusion, comparing herself to William Faulkner’s Joe Christmas who is known to be racially unidentified. On further analysis, however, certain themes emerge that runs throughout the poem. I find hidden truth to be a major one. In the poem ‘Photograph: ice storm 1971’ she describes a period of bad weather, comparing it to her family situation: she says that people don’t remember the ‘power lines down’ or the ‘food rotting’, rather they only remember the beautiful weather. Similarly, people know names and dates but don’t seem to care about the hidden truth which is the violence at home. In section II, Tretheway gives a detailed account of the war from the point of view of a soldier. She addresses the black soldiers who died in the war whose names are not even honored and the ‘unclaimed’ bodies of the soldiers who died. Now history only remembers the names of the Confederate soldiers who died in the war and not the rest of the black soldiers; another element of the hidden truth. Finally, in the last section of the book, Tretheway recalls in her poem ‘Southern History’ an instance in her school History class where the teacher claims that the enslaved African Americans were, in fact, happy, well-fed and ‘better off under the master's care’. She faces a personal dilemma of whether to say something or not (instance of identity crisis) but decides to stay quiet, letting the truth stay hidden from her classmates. Another thing I found very intriguing was that the poems showed no sense of rhyme except the poem ‘Graveyard Blues’. Why did Tretheway opt for a rhyme scheme when talking about the death of her mother and not the Native Guard? The rhyme scheme mandates a set syllable pattern that could cause restraint in expressing emotion but she chose to use no rhyme scheme when expressing the emotions of the soldiers during an experience that was almost a century before her birth.