{"id":28894,"date":"2013-02-19T06:07:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T06:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=28894"},"modified":"2013-02-19T06:07:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T06:07:50","slug":"us-poet-laureate-natasha-trethewey-on-the-legacy-of-the-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=28894","title":{"rendered":"US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey on the legacy of the Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/style-blog\/wp\/2013\/01\/30\/us-poet-laureate-natasha-trethewey-on-the-legacy-of-the-civil-war\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey on the legacy of the Civil War<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2013-01-30<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ron Charles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One hundred and fifty years later, Americans are still fighting the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_Poet_Laureate\" target=\"_blank\">US Poet Laureate<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creativewriting.emory.edu\/faculty\/trethewey.html\" target=\"_blank\">Natasha Trethewey<\/a> said at the Library of Congress on Wednesday. The field of battle is now historical memory, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gatling_gun\" target=\"_blank\">gatling guns<\/a> have been replaced by symbols, but the contest over what sort of nation this will be \u2014 and was \u2014 continues, according to the 46-year-old poet.<\/p>\n<p>Before a standing-room-only crowd of 300 people, Trethewey focused her remarks on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Walt_Whitman\" target=\"_blank\">Walt Whitman\u2019s<\/a> complicated response to black soldiers. Her lecture \u2014 in association with the Library\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/myloc.gov\/exhibitions\/civil-war-in-america\/pages\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cCivil War in America\u201d exhibit<\/a> \u2014 elegantly blended scholarship, cultural criticism and poetry&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;When she toured historic sites in her native <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mississippi\" target=\"_blank\">Mississippi<\/a>, where \u201cthe dead stand up in stone,\u201d she found the same act of erasure still being carried out by memorials, plaques and even tour guides working for the Park Service. The record is \u201crife with omission and embellishment\u201d that keeps \u201cblacks relegated to the margins of historical memory,\u201d she said. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy\" target=\"_blank\">Daughters of the Confederacy<\/a> worked diligently to make sure that Americans remember the Civil War \u201conly in terms of states\u2019 rights, not in terms of slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trethewey\u2019s lecture this week was a kind of homecoming. Ten years ago, she conducted research on black soldiers in the Library of Congress and composed parts of her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3097\" target=\"_blank\">Native Guard<\/a>,\u201d in the Main Reading Room. Her most recent collection, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=23366\" target=\"_blank\">Thrall<\/a>,\u201d explores her life as the daughter of an African American woman and a white man, the poet Eric Trethewey&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/style-blog\/wp\/2013\/01\/30\/us-poet-laureate-natasha-trethewey-on-the-legacy-of-the-civil-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey on the legacy of the Civil War The Washington Post 2013-01-30 Ron Charles One hundred and fifty years later, Americans are still fighting the Civil War, US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey said at the Library of Congress on Wednesday. The field of battle is now historical memory, and gatling guns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,20,25],"tags":[1133,13731,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-28894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-natasha-trethewey","tag-ron-charles","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28894","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=28894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}