Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the profound connection between a child's artistry and their parent's influence, highlighting a transformation in their relationship.
Natasha Trethewey reflects on the dynamic interplay between her identity as a poet and her father's influence on her creative journey. The quote illustrates how she evolved from being the subject of her father's poetry to becoming a poet herself, engaging with his work and contributing her own voice. This transformation signifies a deepening of their relationship and a continuity of artistic expression across generations.
In practice
In a poetry reading, one might quote this to illustrate the influence of familial bonds on creative expression.
I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.
For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
People always want to be on the right side of history; it is a lot easier to say, 'What an atrocity that was' then it is to say, 'What an atrocity this is.'
There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that was lost, develop the character of the fiancee. There's another strategy that one can employ, maybe riskier... Make the reader suffer the loss of the character in a more literal way.
Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers The dust from which it came.
If you give an answer to your viewer, your film will simply finish in the movie theatre. But when you pose questions, your film actually begins after people watch it. In fact, your film will continue inside the viewer.
We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.
I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours
For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.
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