Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Natasha Trethewey's "The Four Corners" serves as a tapestry of memory, community, and change, unfolding across the streets and bars of North Gulfport. The poem begins with an epigraph by Richard Hugo that underlines the durability of scenes in human memory: "Nothing dies as slowly as a scene." With this context, Trethewey leads us into a world where the past is vivid, marked by a complexity of human interactions and evolving environments.

The poem opens in an "empty lot," a space where people are "betting on recall." This setting and action are significant, as it implies that the act of remembering is a gamble. The "passed-around bottle" serves as a catalyst to memory, each sip "burning at first-a lingering taste." But who can truly "call it up," revive the past in full color and sound? This question becomes the central tension of the poem, as memory confronts the erasures of time, symbolized by the "drag of a worn needle" or a "bulldozer's drone."

The poem then moves into a historical journey of "old highway 49," a pathway "running flush with the tracks," laden with "wild persimmon and pecan trees." Here is a crossroads, "The Four Corners," which is more than just an intersection of streets. It serves as a metonymy for a communal hub, a center of lives lived, tales told, and identities forged. This is a place where maps and official street names-once "named for some president"-matter less than lived experience and local nomenclature.

In The Four Corners, a vibrant community takes shape. There's Miss Gaynette wielding an ax to reclaim her man, Miss Leretta discovering her second husband while "fixing chicken plates in the back," and Mister Pledge, who preaches "till his liquor and his money ran out." Each character is a unique thread in the community fabric, contributing to a narrative tapestry that captures the essence of the place. In these corners, the narrator's mother learned to stroll and met her beau, and the narrator herself cooled off in the parking lot with the promise of drinks and a share of a "solid paycheck."

As the poem navigates through these complex characters and their stories, it also embraces sensory details: the "red light over the bar, smell of reefer, the cackle of a beered-up crone." These elements anchor the narrative in the realm of the physical, offering us a way into the visceral experience of memory.

Towards the end, morning glories open "like trumpets at closing time," suggesting a sense of renewal amid endings. The poem closes with an old woman, a universal "Auntie," who has witnessed generations come and go. Through her, the poem ties the past, present, and future together, and the narrator is "high now on recollection," summoning the past back to life in the poem's final line, "wagered wine-sudden need to dance."

By weaving the past and the present together, "The Four Corners" captures a moment of dynamic stillness. Trethewey's work crystallizes the ebb and flow of time in a communal space, where each individual is both a particle and a wave in the stream of collective memory. In doing so, the poem crafts a tribute to the enduring, transformative power of community and recollection.

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