{"id":25824,"date":"2012-10-08T01:11:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T01:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25824"},"modified":"2012-10-08T01:12:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T01:12:04","slug":"the-nation%e2%80%99s-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25824","title":{"rendered":"The nation\u2019s poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The nation\u2019s poet<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/a>
\nPersonal Journeys<\/a>
\n2012-10-06<\/p>\n

Rosalind Bentley<\/strong>, Arts and Culture writer<\/p>\n

Personal Journeys is a new weekly feature for readers who like good writing and good story-telling<\/em><\/p>\n

The National Book Festival<\/a> along the Mall in Washington<\/a> is thronged with readers and authors who\u2019ve come to revel in the written word on this fall day in 2004.<\/p>\n

Just three years old, the festival has been forged by first lady Laura Bush<\/a> and the Library of Congress<\/a> in the belief that literature is a living thing, that the right words, composed in just the right way, can push a life forward.<\/p>\n

To the podium steps poet Natasha Trethewey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her work illuminates people in the shadows: a seamstress stitching her way through segregation; an early 20th-century prostitute so fair skinned she can pass for white; a dock worker\u2019s wife who keeps her husband\u2019s supper warm as she waits for him well into the night.<\/p>\n

Into some of her poems she has woven her own complex story: the blending of the black and white blood that made her; her blood tie to her native <\/strong>Mississippi<\/strong><\/a>; the blood of her mother, cruelly spilled.<\/p>\n

What binds the characters? It is that in the body of American letters, they have routinely been pushed to the edge of the page by other protagonists deemed more \u201cuniversal.\u201d This day Natasha reads poems that bring their marginalized stories to the center…<\/p>\n

…2012:<\/strong> It\u2019s May. Natasha is the incoming chair of the creative writing program at Emory University and the newly minted poet laureate of her home state of Mississippi. She gets an unexpected call from the Library of Congress. Billington<\/a> and his colleagues have been following her work since her first reading at the book festival. They are impressed with her 2007 collection, \u201cNative Guard<\/a>.\u201d They are also taken with \u201cBeyond Katrina<\/a>,\u201d her 2010 meditation on the psychological and structural wreckage dotting Mississippi\u2019s Gulf Coast<\/a> landscape years after Hurricane Katrina\u2019s<\/a> landfall.<\/p>\n

Billington believes the time for this kind of poet is right now. She is only 46 and in the prime of her artistic life. This will signal that the library is looking forward. He offers her the highest United States honor a poet can achieve, poet laureate of the nation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saying yes isn\u2019t hard, though the honor humbles her, even makes her a little nervous…<\/p>\n

…Sept. 13, 2012:<\/strong> The audience in the auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington leaps to its feet. Applause crashes against the stage where a black woman in a dark dress stands, her hands clasped to her heart. Today, she looks as though she might burst with joy.<\/strong> This is U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, about to officially open the library\u2019s literary season with a reading. She has come to tell an American story….<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The nation\u2019s poet The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Personal Journeys 2012-10-06 Rosalind Bentley, Arts and Culture writer Personal Journeys is a new weekly feature for readers who like good writing and good story-telling The National Book Festival along the Mall in Washington is thronged with readers and authors who\u2019ve come to revel in the written word on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,1617,20,25],"tags":[7487,1133,12337,12336],"class_list":["post-25824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-poetry-books","category-usa","category-women","tag-atlanta-journal-constitution","tag-natasha-trethewey","tag-rosalind-bentley","tag-the-atlanta-journal-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}