By Rachel Amaru, Co-Founder of Great Difficulty For Children
While Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes clarifies on Hurricane Katrina’s impact on a household in New Orleans, the entire Gulf Coast was horribly damaged. The poet Natasha Tretheway assesses this in Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast You can listen (or read) this NPR meeting with Tretheway, and additionally read a passage from her book.
Below is Tretheway’s rhyme, “Liturgy to the Mississippi Gulf Coastline.” The web link will certainly additionally take you to a lovely piece she discussed her process of writing this poem, and of visiting home 9 months after Katrina.
Celebration to the Mississippi Gulf Shore
To the guard looking at the Gulf
thinking of bodies removed from the shore, plugging her ears against the bells and sirens– noise of alarm system– the gaming floor on the Shore;
To Billy Scarpetta, waiting tables on the Coast, staring at the Gulf thinking about water increasing, thinking about New Orleans, thinking of cleaning the Shore;
To the woman desiring for returning to the Shore, thinking about water increasing, her child’s tomb, my mommy’s tomb– underwater– on the Coast;
To Miss Mary, someplace;
To the displaced, staying in trailers along the shore, next to the highway, in uninhabited lots and open areas; to everyone that remained on the Coastline, that came back– or can not– to the Shore;
To those who died on the Shore.
This is a memory of the Shore: to every his very own recollections, her improvements, their remediations, the return of the Coastline.
This is a time capsule for the Coastline: words of individuals– do not forget us —
the audio of wind, waves, the silence of tombs,
the muffled voice of history, bull-dozed and hidden under sand soaked the wearing down shore,
the concrete slabs of reconstructing the Coast.
This is a love letter to the Gulf Coast, a praise tune, a dirge, conjuration and praise, a requiem for the Gulf Coast.
This can not reconstruct the Coast; it is a charge, an issue, my logos– argument and discourse– with the Shore.
This is my nostos — my pilgrimage to the Coast, my memory, my numeration– native child: I am the Gulf Coastline.
***
Artists will remain to address Hurricane Katrina with words and visual art. It is how they will certainly witness, exactly how they will certainly bear in mind. Art is one means we human beings browse injury. Please learn more concerning Jerika Marchan’s Verse of Hurricane Katrina and this recent item on PBS regarding just how poetry on the cyclone has actually served, and continues to offer, a restorative duty– this is a fine example of bibliotherapy. The PBS link consists of a variety of rhymes, and video of a Zoom occasion put on by Poets & & Writers on the 15 th Wedding anniversary.
Cyclone Katrina is an influential event in American history for what it demonstrated (and remains to show) about federal government plan and the predicament of the inadequate, especially those that are people of color. Kevin Youthful, who edited the Library of America Anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Battle & & Song (where I frequently price quote), probably alludes to this by choosing to title the final section of the collection, “After the Storm.”
I extremely suggest checking out Sarah Broom’s narrative, The Yellow House Winner of the 2019 National Publication Award, it is a gorgeous reflection on New Orleans, race, and the devastation and loss brought on by Typhoon Katrina.