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A national cheerleader for poetry

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    Power Player of the Week: Natasha Trethewey, U.S. poet laureate

  • Duration 3:23
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It is common practice in Washington for people to use words to score a point to stay.

But we found a woman who uses words to reach out and -- he'll.

And she is our power player of the vote.

Comfort us when we have losses to celebrate with us our joys and triumphs.

But also.

To help -- see things differently than we do in our everyday lives.

Natasha -- -- is talking about poetry and the role she says it continues to play.

Not as accessible as pros not as immediate as video images but conveying something important something deeper.

I man you -- just keep record sometimes our everyday speech.

Has a way of saying this is Meehan and that's you and -- different and I think poetry has a way of saying this is my experience and you can sharing it with me.

Truth be told I do not want to forget anything of my former life -- land.

-- away as the nation's nineteenth poet laureate what is working out of The Library of Congress.

Her job this year is to spread her -- of.

Public that I actually get inspired -- helps me write columns to be here.

She describes her role as a cheerleader is in a former life was a cheerleader and it seemed a natural way for me think about.

Being excited about something being passionate about something that means a lot to me that I'd like to convey to other people.

Trucked away his father is -- her mother black.

They had to leave Mississippi in the sixties to get married how -- Do you think it affected you the idea that your parents marriage.

Was a crime.

Well I think that it created in me a sense of psychological -- -- and when she was nineteen.

Her mother was murdered by her former stepfather.

That's the moment where I really trying to in the language poetry.

Tim makes sense if that loss here -- -- stand up in silly white marble on confederate afternoon.

I stand on the ground once hunted by the -- ahead -- KEY.

Of the themes of her work is memories what gets left out of the nation's public -- -- she won a Pulitzer prize in 2007.

For native guard.

About a forgotten -- union regiment that fought in the civil war.

We know it is our duty now to keep white men as presidents rebel soldiers would be masters.

They broke that home in the library's reading room in -- 17 days sometimes to -- -- she would look up.

At a -- marked poetry.

And now when I do it I can't see the word poetry so clearly.

But I have faith that it's there.

And so -- the way it will continue to -- -- for an art form that forces you to slow down and contemplate.

In a world that doesn't always valued that.

Trying to find.

-- way to say -- -- so necessary to be said but so difficult also to someone that I can speak very intimately to across time and space.

On page that is thrilling to me.

Thought the way it works out of the attic in The Library of Congress and she has set up office hours there for people who wanna come and discuss poetry.

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