美国国家公共电台 NPR Natasha Trethewey: Poetry Speaks 'Across The Lines That Would Divide Us'

Natasha Trethewey: Poetry Speaks 'Across The Lines That Would Divide Us'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Former two-time poet laureate of the United States has a retrospective collection with poems about U.S. history, personal history and the lives of people who are often overlooked by history and unsung in poetry. Her collection is called "Monument."

Natasha Trethewey has been the poet laureate of Mississippi, a Guggenheim Fellow and is now the Board of Trustees professor of English at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She joined us from WBEZ in Chicago, and I asked her to read part of her poem, "Southern Gothic." A warning, she uses some strong, sometimes hurtful language, including the N-word, in her reading.

NATASHA TRETHEWEY: (Reading) The lines in my young father's face deepen toward an expression of grief. I have come home from the schoolyard with the words that shadow us in this small Southern town - peckerwood and nigger lover, half-breed and zebra - words that take shape outside us. We're huddled¹ on the tiny island of bed, quiet in the language of blood. The house, unsteady on its cinder² block haunches, sinking deeper into the muck of ancestry³. Oil lamps flicker⁴ around us - our shadows, dark glyphs on the wall, bigger and stranger than we are.

SIMON: Was that a specific day, and do you remember what happened? Or could this have been any day?

TRETHEWEY: It seems like it could've been any day.

SIMON: And your parents - your mother and father were married when, I guess, a love like theirs was against the law in Mississippi, wasn't it?

TRETHEWEY: That's right, and probably as many as 20 other states in the nation. My parents met at Kentucky State College, which is an HBCU, one of the historically black colleges and universities. My father, white boy, young like my mother - they both went to college at about 17. He was from rural Nova Scotia and got out a guide to American colleges and universities to find one that he could afford. He found Kentucky State. He didn't exactly realize at first that they were a black college. But he went anyway. And there, he met my mother.

SIMON: I gather, from having read the poems and some interviews, there was love in your parents' marriage. But it's hard for us to appreciate in this day and age the strain there must have been by the outside world, too.

TRETHEWEY: I think there was quite a lot of strain. My parents were constantly met with both subtle and not-so-subtle forms of intimidation⁵. And when I was a very small child, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in my grandmother's yard.

SIMON: Do you remember any of that?

TRETHEWEY: I remember it, it seems to me, only because it was a story that we told every year, I think, in order not to forget it. At the time, my grandmother's house was across from the Mount Olive Baptist Church, which was holding a voter registration⁶ drive to get disenfranchised African-Americans registered to vote. The church didn't have its own driveway, so my grandmother let them park the church bus in her driveway.

We never knew if what happened - that act of terrorism - was directed at us, the interracial family living inside the house, or at the church for hosting this voter registration drive, or perhaps both.

SIMON: And your parents couldn't stay together - didn't stay together, did they?

TRETHEWEY: No. They divorced when I was 6. My mother and I moved to Atlanta. She wanted to go to graduate school at the Atlanta University Center to get her master's degree in social work. And she met and married my stepfather. He was - I don't think we knew it then, of course, but very troubled. He was a Vietnam veteran with a history of mental illness. And they were married for about 10 years, during which time he grew increasingly paranoid and violent toward her. She did all the right things. She was what you might call a perfect victim.

SIMON: Your mother died. Your mother was murdered. And yet, I've read in interviews that you've said this made you a poet.

TRETHEWEY: Yes. It feels very much to me that out of the ruin of her life, I was able to fashion a life for myself in which I not only survived but also thrived. And I think it's because those years with her, she instilled⁷ in me a sense of resilience, a kind of strength.

Not long after she died, I had a dream about her. In the dream, she said to me, do you know what it means to have a wound that never heals? And I was a freshman⁸ in college. And I'm pretty sure I'd never read Lorca, didn't know anything about the concept of duende. And in Lorca's notion of art, the demon⁹ that drives an artist - that sort of awareness¹⁰ of the possibility of death. He wrote, in trying to heal the wound that never heals lies the strangeness in an artist's work.

And I think, at that moment, one of us was giving me permission, telling me that I had that wound. And that's the wound that could make me a writer.

SIMON: Is there a special need and role for poetry now in these times of overheated language and conspicuous¹¹ public hatred¹² and, well, we could list?

TRETHEWEY: Absolutely. I mean, I think poetry asks - it demands of us, in many ways, that we slow down, that we engage with language that isn't soundbites and uncivil, language that allows us to see ourselves in the intimate experience of others, to hear the rhythms of our own heartbeats in the rhythms of someone else's intimate voice speaking across the distances, speaking across the lines that would divide us, reminding us not what makes us different but what makes us alike - what we share.

SIMON: Natasha Trethewey. Her collection is "Monument." Thank you so much for being with us.

TRETHEWEY: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF YANN TIERSEN'S "LOK GWELTZ")

1 huddled   

挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
• We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。

2 cinder   

n.余烬，矿渣

参考例句：

• The new technology for the preparation of superfine ferric oxide from pyrite cinder is studied.研究了用硫铁矿烧渣为原料，制取超细氧化铁红的新工艺。
• The cinder contains useful iron,down from producing sulphuric acid by contact process.接触法制硫酸的矿渣中含有铁矿。

3 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

4 flicker   

vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现

参考例句：

• There was a flicker of lights coming from the abandoned house.这所废弃的房屋中有灯光闪烁。
• At first,the flame may be a small flicker,barely shining.开始时，光辉可能是微弱地忽隐忽现，几乎并不灿烂。

5 intimidation   

n.恐吓，威胁

参考例句：

• The Opposition alleged voter intimidation by the army.反对党声称投票者受到军方的恐吓。
• The gang silenced witnesses by intimidation.恶帮用恐吓的手段使得证人不敢说话。

6 registration   

n.登记，注册，挂号

参考例句：

• Marriage without registration is not recognized by law.法律不承认未登记的婚姻。
• What's your registration number?你挂的是几号？

7 instilled   

v.逐渐使某人获得（某种可取的品质），逐步灌输( instill的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Nature has instilled in our minds an insatiable desire to see truth. 自然给我们心灵注入了永无休止的发现真理的欲望。 来自辞典例句
• I instilled the need for kindness into my children. 我不断向孩子们灌输仁慈的必要。 来自辞典例句

8 freshman   

n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女)

参考例句：

• Jack decided to live in during his freshman year at college.杰克决定大一时住校。
• He is a freshman in the show business.他在演艺界是一名新手。

9 demon   

n.魔鬼，恶魔

参考例句：

• The demon of greed ruined the miser's happiness.贪得无厌的恶习毁掉了那个守财奴的幸福。
• He has been possessed by the demon of disease for years.他多年来病魔缠身。

10 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

11 conspicuous   

adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的

参考例句：

• It is conspicuous that smoking is harmful to health.很明显，抽烟对健康有害。
• Its colouring makes it highly conspicuous.它的色彩使它非常惹人注目。

12 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。