Poet's Choice

Natasha Trethewey's remarkable new book, Native Guard, takes its title from the unit of black Union soldiers assigned to guard Confederate prisoners of war. This piece of American history, previously unknown to me as I assume it is to most readers, took place at Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island in the state of Mississippi, where Trethewey was born.

The book's title sequence presents some of the history in a series of poems in the first person: the voice of a slavery-born Native Guard soldier who recounts, for example, the recorded incident where white Union troops fired on the Native Guard rather than on the white Confederate enemy. (An "unfortunate incident," in a colonel's words as Trethewey reports and annotates them.)

Here is Trethewey's "Elegy for the Native Guards." The rhyme emphasizes the demand that we assimilate and consider and consult our history:

Elegy for the Native Guards

Now that the salt of their blood

Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .

-- Allen Tate

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead

trailing the boat--streamers, noisy fanfare--

all the way to Ship Island. What we see

first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee--

half reminder of the men who served there--

a weathered monument to some of the dead.