Strategy Response Week 8

As in many places within the collection "Native Guard," Natasha Trethewey's Miscegenation manipulates the larger poetic tradition of recycling language by recycling one word especially: Mississippi. This word calls attention to itself as it appears in each stanza and carries throughout the collection. The word "Mississippi" itself recycles letters and the double-consonant sounds, allowing the word to behave as a symbol for what the work as a whole is performing. The word "Mississippi" stands as a geographical symbol, which further implies cultural and historical meaning, adding to Trethewey's focus on the Civil War in the text overall.