Strategy Response, Week 8

In Natasha Trethewey's poem "Miscegenation," she not only reflects the mixing of races that is prominent in her book Native Guard but also mixes several different subjects into one poem, exemplifying the title itself and very skillfully tying several seemingly unrelated subjects together. Throughout the short fourteen-line poem, Trethewey mentions race relations, state laws, several states and countries, religion, language, and holidays. This poem is a perfect example of Hugo's concept of getting off subject, as it has a feel that seems almost like stream-of-consciousness in that she relates all of these subjects to one another by simply writing and letting the words take her where they will, and they eventually take her through all of those subjects and back to where she began. It is interesting that she makes it look effortless to write such an easy stream-of-consciousness that flows from one seemingly-unrelated idea to the next and is a technique that I know that I and many of my classmates strive for.