{"author":"Natasha Trethewey","author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey","total_quotes":19,"quotes":[{"text":"The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["myself","mother","grief "],"id":4414,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"I think the biggest thing that I have to do is to remind people that poetry is there for us to turn to not only to remind us that we're not alone - for example, if we are grieving the loss of someone - but also to help us celebrate our joys. That's why so many people I know who've gotten married will have a poem read at the wedding.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["alone","wedding","celebrate "],"id":25285,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"From the catbird seat, I've found poetry to be the necessary utterance it has always been in America.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["america","always","found "],"id":45541,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["faith","think","kind "],"id":57985,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["experience","mother","me "],"id":67969,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they do. I think we forget the places that we encounter it, say, in songs or in other little bits and pieces of things that we may have remembered from childhood.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["childhood","people","think "],"id":115990,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"Poetry's a thing that belongs to everyone.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["everyone","belongs","thing "],"id":187707,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"Dismissals of poetry are nothing new. It's easy to dismiss poetry if one has not read much of it.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["easy","nothing","new "],"id":201197,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["marriage","day","parents "],"id":202173,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"},{"text":"I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to 'fix' a poem.","author":"Natasha Trethewey","tags":["poetry"],"id":229429,"author_id":"Natasha+Trethewey"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}