I had always intended “to get to” Natasha Trethewey’s poetry, but when I saw that she had a new book coming out, that she was coming to Lemuria, and that she had been featured in Mississippians, there was no time to waste. To begin, I explored some of her poetry and ended up finding a book of Bellocq’s photography.
In the early 1900s, E. J. Bellocq photographed the prostitutes of of Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans. Bellocq’s was largely unknown until the 1970s and many years later, in 2002, Trethewey published a collection of poetry inspired by these women and Bellocq’s photographs. The photographs can be painful to look at, but the viewer also recognizes the respect with which the photos were taken. Similarly, when reading Trethewey’s poetry, she leaves the reader the tenderness with which she writes.
I just finished reading Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Although I have been reading Trethewey’s work on a variety of subject matters, each piece leaves me with the care and tenderness she gives to the subject while never neglecting the hard truths of a situation. In reflecting on the possibilities that her family hopes lie ahead for her brother, Trethewey writes:
“There was still the possibility of a life he imagined–prosperous, stable, perhaps even emotionally rewarding, as it had been when he was first renovating houses. And it must have been in sight, reflected in the images of the “good life” plastered on casino billboards up and down Highway 49 to the beach: attractive people, in elegant clothes, laughing into cocktail glasses poised above plates of beautiful, abundant food. The casinos were among the first to recover, and they broadcast their message of affluence above the heads of people struggling to reconstruct their lives from remnants.” (page 92)
I will continue to read her work and no doubt we are proud she is a Mississippian. Natasha Trethewey will be at Lemuria this coming Wednesday, September 8th for a signing at 5:00, reading at 5:30.
See Nan’s blog on Beyond Katrina.
Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”
Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, October 28th.
Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.
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