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Epigraph: Fredrick Douglas
- power of writing and documenting
- one of first people to write slave documentary
- about remembering and documenting slavery

tone - apistolary form
free-verse verse blank verse (haha)
enjambent - when the line continues to the next part, doesn't stop
setting - the golf
the age - 33 (reference to Jesus and when he died)
repetition
chronological

poem brings up
- reference to knife and being inscribed
- power of writing and representation
- power of remember
- pen equated with the way scars inscribe slavery one ones body
- idea of truth telling
- personalized history

title is important
- guard: freed or contraband
- freed slaves were called contraband (name of anything you obtain during war)
- enslaved people still considered property so referred to as contraband of war
- talks about role as part of the regiment
- native guard not called infantry
- there is a clear distinction between white and black soldiers
- black soldiers not treated equally even when they are helping them fight
- this history being forgotten

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Epigraph talks about daphadills and weaping
- nature imagery
- cycle of life
- starts young and naive and want to bring mom flowers, but flowers dry and up and die (metaphor to her mother)
- flowers don't last long, same as mother
- epigraph foreshadows the rest of the poem

Genus Narcissus: scientific name of daphadills
- narcissus was obsessed with self, died because he was looking at himself too much
- why is she giving scientific name and allusion to narcissism
- childish vanity
- vain? giving her mom flowers?
- feeling of selfishness for wanting her mom to not be dead
- niave
- innocence
- not knowing that things die
- feeling guilty for foreshadowing her death with flowers
- feels like she took flowers for granted, you don't have to take care of them, they are just gonna grow, so you can have as many as you want
- narcissis the greek figure turned into a flower in his vain, hence the name
--> same as her mother, knows she will be there, sort of takes her being there for granted and then feels guilty when she is no longer there for her
--> idea of taking her mom for granted making her die more quickly?

Poem is styled
- 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 1
- italics, sets off flowers speaking to her

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Many religious undertones throughout the poem
- seems to understand nonreligious things more than religious things ie question mark after communion, questioning kneeling with their hands-- > overall confusion around religion
- religion is harder to understand than what the body is saying
- very clear in understanding gestures that do not have anything to do with religion ie victory and peace
-"communion?"--> represents becoming one, the promise of redemption, a silent gesture that requires faith, the speaker however wants words

Who is speaker? Natasha Trethewey ie author

Collection context, poem before is Graveyard Blues

Stanzas/Structure --> groups in twos; sentences seem to never end, extremely long ie enjambment
- What does the structure of the poem do? Forces reader to pause and reflect, because each stanza is a little bit different

Speaker does not understand grief ie why their mother died--> easy things to understand in life like the peace sign and a thumbs up; but grief is very hard to understand
- Figure described is someone in mourning, very obvious ie can't miss what the body is saying
- some things very easy to read; starts with figure on their knees and ends with figure on their knees, their hands are only just a little bit moved but that causes some confusion for the speaker--> what is the body saying now?

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theme
- circular repeating loss
- thoughts around persons death keep going around

structure
- palandrome poem
- reads the same forward and backwards
- if we reordered the poem it would read literally the same
- same feelings, but slightly different, turned over and reordered, alludes to emotions
- Abaaba
- in triplets

vocabulary
- erebus - has to do with greek mythology
- personification of darkness in greek mythology or talking about the underworld
- has to do with death and place that they cant reach (rift, hallow, happens when she is asleep, slips into this place)
- line that repeats "forsaking" - again and again feeling betrayed by mothers death
- why is it called: "Myth"?
- Myth is a traditional story especially concerning early history of people trying to understand phenomenons - lots of time having supernatural beings

3 conclusions of what myth could mean
1. grief/death
2. people that are lost
3. subconscious considered mythological (feels like space)

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one of four of the scenes of a documentary of the mississippi
- goes in chronological order
- telling a story throughout time
- historic background behind stories about mississippi
- in "flood" references the national guard

central theme
- feeling of being left behind and having to catch up
- seem through speaker who is spectator of his young girl
- little girl is determined (going to library)
- library that girl is going to is segregated
- explains that the library is closed and out of reach and that the young girl would speak up
- taken as idea that the library is open to her but she still can't get to it
- idea of having to do a lot of catch up work to get simple things like a book

rhyme sceme
- ababa
- same as every other
- not structure of a complete sonnet
- written by white men about white experience and white beauty, so people felt left behind and like they had to catch up
- this being in semi-sonnet form, she almost makes it to library, the poem almost makes it to a sonnet
- repetition of title at the end of the library
- the word wait heavily repeated

"You are late"
- to what?
- learning it was prohibited?
- for reasons that you couldn't get to the library when it was open?

imagery - almost like looking at picture
- book in hand
- library closed
- door just out of reach

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- Meter and rhyme scheme
- iambic pentameter
- heavy use of repetition
- first-person narration
- imagery of funeral/church
- mother's funeral
- grief, guilt
- seems to take place in both a graveyard and a church
---> there is action
- memory recall/past tense
- ends in the present
- “Death stops the body's work, the soul's a journeyman."
---> journeyman: a worker who has learned a trade and works for another person usually by the day
---> the soul carries on after the body stops its work
- each stanza has its own rhyme scheme
---> this creates rhythm

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southern gothic - mode of literature
--> dark humor, grotestque characters, humiliation, graphic and vivid imagery
racial slur for poor white person
glif - symbol, similar to hyrogliphics
--> architechtual moment as well
- dark western-europeans style
- re-imagining of the midevil
- gargoyles
- has its own architecture
- "muck of ancestry"
- idea of their foundation sinking
- referencing to intergeneration racial mixing
- part of who she is in the moment but not forever because he can leave
- southern gothic specifically because she is from the south

Symbols
--> prevalent in this poem
--> when describing her parents body
--> allusions to shape, talking about father

Style of this poem:
- round a bote
- 20 lines