Trethewey\'s poems] dig beneath the surface of history--personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago--to explore the human struggles that we all face. *Academy of American Poets\' chancellor Marilyn Nelson.
This is a poet\'s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.
As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history.
In this setting, each section, each poem drawn from an opus of classics both elegant and necessary,* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow.
Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet\'s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.
Monument , Trethewey\'s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, Gulf coast victims of Katrina.
Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress Layering joy and urgent defiance--against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone--Trethewey\'s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. --James H.
Trethewey\'s poems] dig beneath the surface of history--personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago--to explore the human struggles that we all face
