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.'
I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.
My ego only needs a good rhythm section
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.
As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.