incident

Natasha Trethewey’s Incident has a unique style about it.  Trethewey repeats a few key phrases as a transition of some sort in between stanzas.  She begins her poem with a sort of forewarning of this by saying: “We tell the story every year-” (line 1).  Obviously the story has been passed down and retold countless times.  When my family gets together at holidays I experience a same situation, and that makes me aware of why she chose to do the style of the poem as she did.  I think this is because when I am retold stories over and over and over again, only certain details seem important and therefore are those details that are remembered and emphasized throughout the years.

In her story, those details include: “charred grass now green” (lines 4 and 7), “we peered from the windows, shades drawn” (line 2 and 5), “cross trussed like a Christmas tree” (lines 6 and 9), “darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps” (lines 8 and 11), white men compared as angels mentioned on lines 10 and 13, “left quietly” (lines 14 and 17), and “by morning all the flames had dimmed” (lines 16 and 19).

This story describes an probably very traumatizing incident that involves the KKK.  White men in their gowns and holding a cross.  Although “nothing really happened” the incident has left a profound effect on Trethwey, and this trauma seems to only let her remember the few, yet important, details that she constantly repeats for further emphasis throughout.  The middle three stanzas also seem to be how different variations of the story were told throughout the years.  Obviously verbal stories do not maintain exact consistency, but through this poem, Trethwey is finally able to solidify her account.