A Conversation with Pulitzer-Winning Poet, Natasha Trethewey

The Russell Moore Show

Christianity Today, Russell Moore

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 914 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Being able to be here and to tell this story—to weep about it occasionally—that is uplifting because what the story says is: ‘I'm still here. I have survived it. I have joy in my life because I have known such depths of despair.’ That is uplifting.” So says Natasha Tretheway, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has authored several books and served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States. Tretheway and Moore discuss their respective familial connections to the state of Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina, and the Gulf Coast. They talk about Tretheway’s lifelong desire to write, her experience as a mixed-race person, and her thoughts on belonging, grief, and faith. Their conversation welcomes all who long for community, creativity, and clarity. Questions addressed during this episode include: Natasha Trethewey Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Tretheway Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Natasha Tretheway Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey Providence by Natasha Trethewey “Pulitzer Prize Winner Trethewey Discusses Poetry Collection” Elizabeth Sewell Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow by Robert Duncan “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe The House of Being (Why I Write) by Natasha Tretheway A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis Michiko Dead by Jack Gilbert Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment by Charles Taylor Seamus Heaney Toni Morrison The Sea by John Banville Click here for a trial subscription at Christianity Today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:53.1	Being able to be here and to tell this story to weep about it occasionally that is
0:58.7	uplifting because what the story says is i'm still here i have survived it i have joy in my life
1:07.0	because i have known such depths and despair. That is uplifting.
1:12.1	Hello, this is Russell Moore, and you're listening to The Russellmore Show, brought to you by Christianity today.
1:29.7	Every week, we explore here conversations and questions from a Christian perspective to help you sort out how to live as a follower of Jesus in confusing times.
1:40.9	This week, we have a conversation to seek to do just that.
1:55.6	Regular listeners know I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And in 2005, both of my grandmother's houses
2:03.4	were destroyed, and most of my family had houses harmed by Hurricane Katrina. I had a student
2:10.3	who was a National Guard person who was there who brought me what he found in the rubble, which was a shred of a Mississippi
2:21.2	flag that had come off of a flagpole. And I was conflicted because I was glad to have some
2:29.5	remnant from Katrina, and I hated the Mississippi flag at the time with the Confederate flag embedded in it.
2:38.7	But I decided to keep it because it reminded me of the complexities and complications of American
	...

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