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A review by pearloz
Thrall: Poems by Natasha Trethewey
3.0
Elegy - Sad one about her father, ostensibly about fly fishing w/ her father.
"You must remember how/the river seeped in over your boots/and how you grew heavier with that defeat"
"You kept casting/your line, and when it did not come back/empty, it was tangled with mine"
Miracle of the Black Leg - Poem in 4 distinct sections traces the provenance of a story: that of a white person losing a leg and having a black leg attached as a replacement. It seems to trace artwork exclusively. In every one the black donor is treated merely as a sacrifice.
On Captivity - Seems to be about a slave ship over taken by the captives (this based solely on the epigraph)--or, more specifically, how the sailors covered themselves after being stripped: by using pages from the bible.
"Think of it:/a woman holding before her/the torn leaves of Genesis/and a man covering himself/with the Good Book's/frontispiece--his own name/inscribed on the page."
Taxonomy - In four parts, one each for four paintings by Juan Rodriguez Juarez. The paintings are apparently about different races of people coming together and their offspring. Titles like "De Espanol y De India Produce Mestiso" (itself used for the dust jacket) really spell the bi-racial nature of the subject matter.
"How not to see/in this gesture/the mind/of the colony"
Kitchen Maid - Again about a painting.
Knowledge - Yep. This one sounds like a medical drawing about lady parts.
The Americans - A series of 3 poems (Dissecting the White Negro, Blood, Help), all of which, again, seem to be examining works of art which depict bi-racial subjects.
Dissecting: "to strip from the flesh/the specious skin" and "so/deep the tincture/-see it!-/we still know white from not"
Blood: this one about a light-skinned girl sitting in a field full of black people working behind her: "Mezzo,/intermediate, how different she's rendered/from the dark kin working the fields behind her./If not for the ray of light appearing as if from beyond/the canvas, we might miss them--three figures/in the near distance, small as an after thought." Ouch.
Later, right around Mythology, the book shifts its focus from the external exploration of art to a more internal exploration of herself, her history, her identity as bi-racial (although Mano Prieta I think is about a photograph of the poet as a young girl and her mother's hand).
Torna Atras - A return to scrutinizing artwork, this time a poem about a descendent regressing.
"You must remember how/the river seeped in over your boots/and how you grew heavier with that defeat"
"You kept casting/your line, and when it did not come back/empty, it was tangled with mine"
Miracle of the Black Leg - Poem in 4 distinct sections traces the provenance of a story: that of a white person losing a leg and having a black leg attached as a replacement. It seems to trace artwork exclusively. In every one the black donor is treated merely as a sacrifice.
On Captivity - Seems to be about a slave ship over taken by the captives (this based solely on the epigraph)--or, more specifically, how the sailors covered themselves after being stripped: by using pages from the bible.
"Think of it:/a woman holding before her/the torn leaves of Genesis/and a man covering himself/with the Good Book's/frontispiece--his own name/inscribed on the page."
Taxonomy - In four parts, one each for four paintings by Juan Rodriguez Juarez. The paintings are apparently about different races of people coming together and their offspring. Titles like "De Espanol y De India Produce Mestiso" (itself used for the dust jacket) really spell the bi-racial nature of the subject matter.
"How not to see/in this gesture/the mind/of the colony"
Kitchen Maid - Again about a painting.
Knowledge - Yep. This one sounds like a medical drawing about lady parts.
The Americans - A series of 3 poems (Dissecting the White Negro, Blood, Help), all of which, again, seem to be examining works of art which depict bi-racial subjects.
Dissecting: "to strip from the flesh/the specious skin" and "so/deep the tincture/-see it!-/we still know white from not"
Blood: this one about a light-skinned girl sitting in a field full of black people working behind her: "Mezzo,/intermediate, how different she's rendered/from the dark kin working the fields behind her./If not for the ray of light appearing as if from beyond/the canvas, we might miss them--three figures/in the near distance, small as an after thought." Ouch.
Later, right around Mythology, the book shifts its focus from the external exploration of art to a more internal exploration of herself, her history, her identity as bi-racial (although Mano Prieta I think is about a photograph of the poet as a young girl and her mother's hand).
Torna Atras - A return to scrutinizing artwork, this time a poem about a descendent regressing.