Thrall: Poems

The stunning follow-up volume to Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer Prize-winning Native Guard, by the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Natasha Trethewey's poems are at once deeply personal and historical--exploring her own interracial and complicated roots--and utterly American, connecting them to ours. The daughter of a black mother and white father, a student of history and of the Deep South, she is inspired by everything from colonial paintings of mulattos and mestizos to the stories of people forgotten by history.

Meditations on captivity, knowledge, and inheritance permeate Thrall, as she reflects on a series of small estrangements from her poet father and comes to an understanding of how, as father and daughter, they are part of the ongoing history of race in America.

Thrall confirms not only that Natasha Trethewey is one of our most gifted and necessary poets but that she is also one of our most brilliant and fearless.

• Historical Poetry: Trethewey confronts the past, from colonial casta paintings to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, weaving personal and national histories into a seamless, searing narrative.
• Confessional Poetry: An intimate exploration of a daughter's complicated love for her poet father, examining the small estrangements and shared histories that bind them.
• African American Poetry: A vital work that interrogates the language of taxonomy, the legacy of slavery, and the construction of mixed-race identity in the American story.
• Southern Literature: Rooted in the landscape and legacy of the Deep South, these poems capture its complex beauty and painful inheritance with fearless precision.