Native guard / Natasha Trethewey.

Theories of time and space -- The southern crescent -- Genus narcissus -- Graveyard blues -- What the body can say -- Photograph: ice storm 1971 -- What is evidence -- Letter -- After your death -- Myth -- At dusk -- Pilgrimage -- Scenes from a documentary history of Mississippi -- King Cotton, 1907 -- Glyph, Aberdeen 1913 -- Flood -- You are late -- Native guard -- Again, the fields -- Pastoral -- Miscegenation -- My mother dreams another country -- Southern history -- Blond -- Southern Gothic -- Incident -- Providence -- Monument -- Elegy for the native guards -- South.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-49).

Natasha Trethewey's muscular, luminous poems explore the complex memory of the American South--history that belongs to all Americans. The sequence forming the spine of the collection follows the ''Native Guard'', one of the first black regiments mustered into service in the Civil War. In Trethewey's hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, a plaque honors Confederate POWs, but there is no memorial to these vanguard Union soldiers. ''Native Guard'' is both a pilgrimage and an elegy, as Trethewey skillfully employs a variety of poetic forms to create a lyrical monument to these forgotten voices. Interwoven are poems honoring Trethewey's mother and recalling her fraught childhood--her parents' interracial marriage was still illegal in 1966, in Mississippi. ''Native Guard'' is a haunting, beguiling narrative caught in the intersections of public and personal testament. As Rita Dove proclaimed, "Here is a young poet in full possession of her craft."