Myth

“Myth” is a metaphoric response by Trethewey to the loss of her mother. As she told Monika Dziamka in The Southern Review of Books, “I have dreamed of my mother and imagined going to that liminal place where she is” (Trethewey, “Natasha Trethewey on Myths, Grief, and Joy”). Trethewey connects this to the Greek myth of Orpheus and how he lost his wife Eurydice to the Underworld. “It feels very much to me like dreams I have when I don’t quite realize that [my mother] is dead,” she continues, “[a]nd then I wake up and I realize it, and I’ve sort of left her back in that world of dream where I’ve seen her, where she’s alive, but she’s out of reach.” The speaker of “Myth” can be perceived as either Orpheus or Trethewey herself, but also serves as someone who universally addresses loss.

The poem opens with the line, “I was asleep when you were dying” (Lines 1, 18) which can be read as a simple statement of fact. The speaker was not awake when the person they loved left this world. However, the word “asleep” (Lines 1, 18) suggests that perhaps not only was the speaker in a literally unconscious state but a cognitively ignorant one, too, remaining in the dark regarding the situation that brought about the loved one’s dying.