Theories of Time and Space

Within the scope of Trethewey’s poetry, personal experience is highly important. Although many of her poems comment upon historical, social, or political beliefs, they do so by way of personal experience and story. Trethewey’s tendency to take the personal and specific and make it relevant to more general concerns and socio-political stresses is a common aspect of the Postmodernist approach to poetic writing. In poetry, Trethewey transforms the painful and personal of her life into what is painful and heavy historically in America.

For Trethewey in particular, it is important to consider her place, circumstances, and time of birth as factors of authorial context. Her parents’ marriage, which at the time (1966) crossed racial and legal barriers in the United States, gives her a personal perspective on the racial conflicts of 1960s America. Being a Mississippi native further adds to this perspective because Trethewey grew up as a child with a diverse racial background in the Southeastern United States during the Civil Rights Movement. Her poems often reflect upon these threads through personal anecdote and story, and her focus extends even further into the past—to the history of her ancestors and the stories of African Americans in Mississippi and the United States.

Trethewey’s personal experiences with loss, trauma, and grief—especially in the early loss of her mother to murder—also impact her writing. Her poems, including “Theories of Time and Space,” are concerned with memory and change and loss; what is a personal loss to Trethewey becomes indicative and relevant to historical and political loss as well.