“1969, Hurricane Camille bearing down,
the old house shuddering as if it will collapse.
Rain pours into every room and he has to keep moving,
keep me out of harms way — a father’s first duty: to protect.
And so in the story, he does: I am small in his arms, perhaps even sleeping.
Water is rising around us and there is no higher place he can take me than this,
memory forged in the storm’s eye: a girl clinging to her father.
What can I do but this? Let him tell it again and again as if it’s always been only us,
and that, when it mattered, he was the one who saved me.”

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Monument is a slightly uneven, but wonderfully evocative collection of poetry inspired by the Deep South culture and life experience.

I loved the style and writing of Natasha Threthewey. Her words created such vivid and clear images in my head, and the stories she told carried such strong feelings. I would highly recommend her and would definitely seek out her previous and future book releases!

Monument by Natasha Trethewey: a poetry collection consisting of serious stories of a mixed-race prostitute, historical struggles of people of colour, about hurricane Katrina, the poet's own family stories of loss. Still, the writing doesn't pull me in as a reader, there's not a lot of emotion here. It doesn't seem like a purposefully lack of emotion either, and it got better towards the end. She describes scenes, but doesn't add much to most of them, the way I see it. 2/5 stars.

A powerful collection of new and previously-published poems from former US Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway. Her poetry considers the legacy of family, trauma, racial identity, history, and the healing power of creativity. Some of my favorite poems are ekphrasitc explorations based on vintage photographs and paintings. Reading these poems is like opening treasure boxes to hidden dimensions of history and place. Swirling with deep meditations on being human and finding soul in language.

An incredible selection of poems from Natasha Trethewey. The poems showcased so beautifully in MONUMENT illuminate Trethewey as the master and the visionary she is. This is a gorgeous, poignant, and necessary book.

Monument brings together Trethewey’s most breathtaking poetry and allows the heavy themes of her work—race, family, identity, history and violence—to ring clear. It’s an beautiful expansion of her previous collections and gives a full portrait of her capabilities and ambition as a poetry. Trethewey not only bears witness to history, but puts us right in the voice of a young mixed woman facing the violence of the time. She not only tells her story with unflinching honesty, she uses it to make us question our own origins, family connections and complicity. Trethewey is forever a poet laureate and this collection only solidified her power.

A U.S. Poet Laureate and Nobel Prize winner, this book gathers some of Trethewey’s best work. A person of mixed race, she examines her own past and the historical past of this country, its racial dealings and how women, particularly women of color or mixed origins, are portrayed in art. Powerful and highly recommended.

This is a powerful collection in entrenched in history, loss, and isolation. Raw and hard hitting in places and poignant in others, from what I've seen of Trethewey's poems, I can't help but feel this is her finest work yet.

With thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Over the years I’ve read each of Natasha Tretheway’s collections in isolation, enjoying to greater or lesser degree each one. In Monument, however, experiencing these poems together and allowing them to tell their collective stories as a whole, I have a completely different impression of and reaction to Trethewey’s body of work. Ordinarily, I’m not a huge fan of Selected Poems because they seem like a repackaging instead of something original and new. This may be the first time that I find the whole greater than its parts. The story Trethewey weaves of history and race and family and violence is both deeply personal and deeply universal. Her poetry is prosy while also being slow, lyrical, and deep. Her poetry is a long, thick, and tangled thread in the American experience, in voice, in language, in story, and those who take the time to experience this collection will be better for it.

This is a beautiful and carefully crafted collection that is so recognizably American in its voice, its themes of race, the South, family, and history. "Searing" was the word that kept coming to mind.

As always, I'm a fan of Trethewey's work. This collection contains previously published poems alongside newly published work. I have put Native Guard into so many people's hands. And, while this collection doesn't quite meet Native Guard in my mind, it's a good, solid collection.

Another fantastic collection of poetry. This will be a great addition to our poetry section at the library.