Building a Bridge between Times Past and Present (Gerhardt Essay)

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[W]here you board the boat for Ship Island, someone will be taking your picture: the photograph—who you were— will be waiting when you return. (17-20) Gerhardt 4 There are at least two ways in interpreting the quote, one being that she is not the same after having traveled the roads of the past, since the photograph only shows who she was and what she now is is altered by the awareness of the history of the region. Another way of looking at it is that she is not necessarily changed, but rather “re-found.” The past shows her where she comes from and deepens the sense of who she is. In both poems the speakers seem to ache and bend under their memories, yet they bravely hold on in their awareness that the road to the future begins in the past. Conscious of how memory is easily distorted by time’s dust, and how it alters depending on who remembers it, the speakers want to write down and capture the past, not only for preservation and remembrance, but to firm up the foundation the future is to be built upon. Even though the past can never be fully grasped “there are things which must be accounted for” (126), and as long as it is patched over, hidden, forgotten—it destabilizes the ground, like mangroves under the sand. History is easily perceived as “past,” but Trethewey shows that it is an integral part of the present. As the speakers acknowledge all that came before, no matter how brutal or grievous, a feeling of connectedness and meaning deepens their experience of the now. The speakers of the poems claim the right to their history, and as they own up the past its haunting ghosts set them free to wake up to a “dawn pink as new flesh: healing, unfettered” (42).
Works Cited Gerhardt 5 Trethewey, Natasha. “Theories of Time and Space.” Native Guard: Poems. Boston: Mariner Books, 2007. 1. Print. Trethewey, Natasha. “Native Guard.” Native Guard: Poems. Boston: First Mariner Books, 2007. 25-30. Print.
Page 1 and 2: Maria Gerhardt Dr. Propst English 1
Page 3: Gerhardt 3 The speakers’ lives ar

Building a Bridge between Times Past and Present (Gerhardt Essay)

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