The Full Text of “Incident”
The Full Text of “Incident”
-
“Incident” Introduction
-
"Incident" appears in Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Native Guard (2006). With stark understatement, the poem narrates an incident of racial terrorism—a cross-burning by the Ku Klux Klan—that has haunted the speaker's family and community for many years. Its use of the pantoum form, which repeats lines in a fixed pattern, echoes the family's yearly repetition of the story. Despite the speaker's claim that "nothing really happened," the poem captures the lasting trauma that racism and hate crimes inflict on their targets.
-
-
“Incident” Summary
-
The speaker says that they (the speaker and their family/community) retell the same story year after year. This is the story of how they peeked out their windows, around the shades that had been pulled down. They retell the story even though nothing too significant happened, the speaker says, adding that the grass that got burnt that night has since regrown.
The speaker repeats that they peeked out their windows, around the shade that had been pulled down, now adding that they saw a cross that had been tied up like a Christmas tree wound with lights. This was before the green grass was burnt. Then they turned out the lights in their rooms and lit the oil lanterns that they used during hurricanes.
A group of men (from the Ku Klux Klan) were gathered around the cross that had been tied up like a Christmas tree, the speaker continues, wearing robes as white as angels'. The speaker says again that they turned out the lights in their rooms and lit oil lamps, the wicks of which shook in their reservoirs of oil.
The white men looked like a group of angels in their white robes. When they had finished (burning the cross), they went away in silence. Nobody came back after that. All night, the speaker says, their lamp wicks shook in their reservoirs of oil; the flames had all died down by dawn.
The speaker says once more that when the men had finished (burning the cross), they men went away in silence. Nobody came back after that. Nothing too significant happened. By dawn, all the flames had died down. The speaker retells the same story year after year.
-
-
“Incident” Themes
-
Racial Terrorism and Trauma
Natasha Trethewey's "Incident" recounts a terrifying event in hauntingly indirect language. The poem's speaker, part of a Black American family, remembers the night the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross outside their home in order to terrorize and intimidate them. Though the speaker claims that "nothing really happened" that night, it's clear the incident was traumatic: the family darkens their rooms to avoid being seen by the Klan, "tremble[s]" while holding candlelit lamps, and "tell[s] the story every year" afterward. Like the Countee Cullen poem its title alludes to, Trethewey's poem shows how racial violence, even when it's not physical, leaves deep psychological scars.
The speaker vividly describes a scene of racial terrorism but omits or reframes some of the details a conventional narration might include. In the process, the poem reflects the way people often struggle to relate traumatic experiences, or choose to relate them in a roundabout manner.
For example, the poem doesn't mention the Klan or racism, nor does it directly narrate the cross-burning itself. Instead, it evokes the scene through indirect details, such as the patch of "charred grass" left in the speaker's yard. The speaker describes the Klan members simply as "a few men" who look "white as angels in their gowns," a description that highlights both their whiteness and the irony that they're doing evil while dressed in "angel[ic]" robes.
It also raises the possibility that the main speaker (i.e., whichever family member is describing "our" shared experience) witnessed the cross-burning when they were too young to grasp exactly what was happening. The incident was so harrowing, the poem suggests, that the speaker would rather not describe it straightforwardly; instead, they report certain facts and hint at their long-term impact.
Indeed, the poem illustrates how the horror of this night has caused lasting, continuous trauma for the family. At the beginning and end of the poem, the speaker emphasizes that "We tell the story every year," implying that the incident has become an important part of their family history. They retell the incident even though "Nothing really happened"—presumably in the sense that no one was physically hurt, and there was no direct confrontation between the family and the Klan. Yet while there was no physical violence, it's clear that this terrorism inflicted a psychological wound. Even the "hurricane lamps" the family lit that night suggest, symbolically, that they survived a kind of disaster. And by comparing the burning cross to "a Christmas tree"—one that the family recalls "every year"—the speaker ironically links the incident with family and holiday rituals. The poem thus evokes how the trauma of racism can become embedded in Black communities, uniting families ("we") around the commemoration of shared pain.
Broadly, the poem suggests that racial terrorism and hate crimes are inherently violent even when they don't involve physical attacks. The emotional scars they leave can last for entire lifetimes, or generations. In this way, Trethewey's "Incident" (2006) consciously echoes the theme of Countee Cullen's "Incident" (1925), whose speaker describes being called an anti-Black slur as a child and remembering the pain for the rest of his life.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Incident”
-
Lines 1-4
We tell the ...
... now green again.Lines 1-4 introduce a "story" that the speaker—a plural "We"—retells "every year." This first quatrain sets the scene but, apart from a few hints, doesn't reveal the subject of the story. Meanwhile, the title has set up the story by calling it an "Incident": a word that could refer to just about anything. From the start, the poem creates dramatic tension by withholding key information.
During this incident, the speaker "peered from the windows" with "shades drawn." It seems the speaker (most likely a family, but perhaps multiple families or a neighborhood) watched something from the windows (of their home?) without wanting to be seen themselves. It's unclear, so far, if they were watching in fear, curiosity, or both.
After this detail comes the strange claim, or disclaimer, that "nothing really happened." The speaker supports this claim by observing that "the charred grass" is "now green again." In other words, the grass outside the home was burned, but now it's grown back. Immediately, this image raises further questions: who or what burned the grass? If this "Incident" involved fire, why does the speaker dismiss it as "nothing really"?
The apparently conflicting claims in this stanza reflect a psychological conflict within the speaker. Perhaps the speaker wants to believe, on some level, that the incident meant "nothing"—but clearly it meant something, because they talk about it every single year. In fact, the charred and healed grass may be more than a factual detail: it may symbolize the speaker's emotional damage and healing.
-
Lines 5-8
We peered from ...
... the hurricane lamps. -
Lines 9-12
At the cross ...
... fonts of oil. -
Lines 13-16
It seemed the ...
... had all dimmed. -
Lines 17-20
When they were ...
... story every year.
-
-
“Incident” Symbols
-
Hurricane lamps
The "hurricane lamps" in the poem are oil lanterns, which the speaker uses for lighting while their "rooms" are "darkened." As their name implies, such lanterns are typically used during storms or other natural disasters. In the poem, however, the family ("We") uses them in lieu of electric lighting while the Ku Klux Klan is burning a cross on their lawn. On a practical level, the dim glow of these lamps makes the family less visible and therefore less vulnerable to attack. Symbolically, their presence implies that the family is surviving a man-made disaster: in other words, that this hate crime is as dangerous, destructive, and life-altering as a hurricane.
More subtly, the poem seems to link the lamps with memory and ritual. With grim irony, the speaker compares the burning cross (a symbol of hate and violence) to "a Christmas tree" (traditionally a symbol of love and peace). In context, this reference to a holiday ritual also calls to mind holiday ceremonies (for Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.) that involve the lighting of lamps and candles. It might even recall certain idioms that link memory and ritual with flames: "burned into memory," "carrying the torch," etc.
In a terrible way, the "story" of the cross-burning has become a "year[ly]" ritual for this family, uniting them (as a close-knit "We") around a shared traumatic experience. The "flames" of the lamps and the cross alike have seared themselves into the family's collective memory. Thus, the burning lamps may symbolically suggest the way the speaker has kept these memories alive—and the way such memories continue to haunt many Black American communities.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 8: “we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.”
- Lines 11-12: “We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps, / the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.”
- Lines 15-16: “The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil; / by morning the flames had all dimmed.”
- Line 19: “By morning all the flames had dimmed.”
-
Charred grass
The "charred grass" mentioned in lines 4 and 7 seems to symbolize the searing, traumatic impact of the cross-burning. Likewise, the renewal of the grass represents at least partial (or surface-level) healing.
The speaker observes that "the charred grass [is] now green again" just after claiming that "nothing really happened" on the night of the "Incident." But the poem shows that the cross-burning wasn't "nothing" at all; it was a terrifying event that the family relives to this day. So if the grass that was first "green" (healthy), then "charred" (damaged), then green again represents the speaker's damaged and healed psyche, it's clear that the damage was significant, and the healing has taken some time. (Also, as the poem's first and last lines make clear, healing isn't the same as forgetting.)
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 4: “the charred grass now green again.”
- Line 7: “the charred grass still green.”
-
-
“Incident” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Repetition
"Incident" is a pantoum, a poetic form that's built on repetition. In a conventional pantoum, the second and fourth lines of the first quatrain recur as the first and third lines of the second quatrain; the second and fourth lines of the second quatrain recur as the first and third lines of the third quatrain; and so on. Also, the first and third lines of the opening quatrain often come back as the fourth and second lines of the last quatrain, as they do here. (For more details, see the Form section of this guide.)
In "Incident," as in many pantoums, the lines don't always repeat word for word; some contain variations the second time around. Here, the variations relate to the poem's thematic focus on memory and storytelling. That is, the way the lines alter slightly as they repeat mirrors the way memories and stories tend to alter slightly with each repetition.
Sometimes the changes also illustrate time shifts in the narrative, as when "the charred grass now green" (line 4) becomes "the charred grass still green" (line 7), signaling a flashback to the moments before the cross-burning scorched the grass.
Even when words repeat exactly, their meaning can subtly differ. In line 16, for example, "the flames had [...] dimmed" refers only to the flames in the hurricane lamps, whereas in line 19, "the flames had dimmed" could refer both to the flames in the lamps and the flames on the cross. This subtle shift is an example of the careful, indirect language through which the poem narrates a traumatic event.
Finally, some lines repeat verbatim. For example, the first and last lines—"We tell the story every year"—are the same, suggesting that some things (like the emotional significance of the memory) don't change.
Where repetition appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
-
Simile
-
End-Stopped Line
-
Irony
-
Alliteration
-
Allusion
-
-
"Incident" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Peered
- Charred
- Trussed
- Hurricane lamps
- Gowns
- Fonts of oil
- White men
-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—”; Line 5: “We peered from the windows, shades drawn,”)
Looked at something curiously or with difficulty (e.g., through a narrow opening).
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Incident”
-
Form
"Incident" is an example of a pantoum, a fixed poetic form adapted into English from the Malayan pantun.
Throughout a pantoum, pairs of lines repeat according to a fixed pattern. The second and fourth lines of the first stanza repeat (often in slightly altered form) as the first and third lines of the next; the second and fourth lines of the second stanza repeat as the first and third lines of the next; and so on.
In addition, the first line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the last stanza, and the third line of the first stanza becomes the second line of the last stanza.
In other words, the form is cyclical; everything in it comes back around. The overall pattern of lines in "Incident" (where A is line 1, B is line 2, etc.) goes as follows:
ABCD BEDF EGFH GIHJ ICJA
This cyclical form evokes the speaker's "year[ly]" repetition of the "story" (line 20), as well as the haunting, recurring memory of the "Incident" itself. Most of the poem's lines change slightly with repetition, perhaps reflecting the way stories and memories alter with time, or the speaker's struggle to describe the experience precisely.
-
Meter
"Incident" doesn't follow a meter. At the same time, it's not free verse; it follows the form of a pantoum, which is governed by a pattern of repetition rather than a metrical pattern. (It's possible to write a metrical pantoum, but meter isn't standard or required.)
In this poem, the cyclical pantoum form evokes the cyclical nature of storytelling and memory. At the same time, the poem's lack of meter gives it a certain flexibility: both the length of lines and the wording of certain "repeated" lines vary. For example, "the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil" (line 12) repeats as "The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil" (line 15), which is two syllables longer. These subtle variations reflect the way stories and memories evolve over time.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Incident" doesn't have a rhyme scheme, exactly; it follows the pantoum form, which repeats entire lines rather than just line-ending sounds. (See the Form section of this guide for more.)
Technically, this repetition does involve a lot of identical rhyme (for example, the word "drawn" at the end of lines 2 and 5), and also includes a single example of end rhyme ("again"/"Then" in lines 4 and 7). But to call "Incident" a rhyming poem would be an oversimplification. The point of the pantoum form is that nearly everything in the poem repeats—like the disturbing story the speaker can't stop telling.
-
-
“Incident” Speaker
-
The speaker is a plural "We": a Black American family, or perhaps multiple Black American families. This "we" has been targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious hate group known for dressing in white robes and terrorizing Black communities. It's implied that several local Klansmen burned a cross outside the speaker's home(s) as a racist threat. (Historically, the Klan has burned crosses as an intimidation tactic, often in an effort to keep neighborhoods racially segregated or deter Black people from voting. Some cross-burnings have been accompanied or followed by physical violence against Black community members.) Though this "Incident" happened years ago, it left lasting psychological scars; the speaker continues to "tell the story every year."
The poem raises the possibility that whoever is speaking for "We"—that is, on behalf of the whole family—was fairly young at the time of the incident. The indirect descriptions of the Klan members, including their ironically angel-like "gowns," suggest that the speaker may not have fully understood, at the time, what the Klan was. They clearly understood, however, that these "white men" were causing fear in their home.
In her public comments on the poem, Natasha Trethewey has said that "Incident" was based on a real-life incident, which took place outside her grandmother's house in Mississippi in the late 1960s.
-
-
“Incident” Setting
-
The poem takes place at the speaker's home in a residential neighborhood. The geographical setting isn't specified, but it may be suburban or rural, given the "grass" outside. (Historically, the Ku Klux Klan and other racist vigilantes have burned crosses on Black families' lawns as a threat or intimidation tactic.)
The speaker also mentions "peer[ing] from the windows" with "shades drawn" and "darken[ing] our rooms." While this response could encompass more than one family/home, it's easiest to imagine as the response of a single family: a close-knit "We" that retells "the story" among themselves afterward. (According to the poet, the poem is based on a real-life incident that took place at her grandmother's home in Mississippi.)
The poem unfolds over the course of a single night, an unspecified number of "year[s]" ago. The nighttime setting heightens the fear and tension of the scene. The "Incident" causes the speaker to lose sleep: they observe that "No one came [back]" after the cross-burning and witness "[t]he wicks trembl[ing] all night in their fonts of oil."
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Incident”
-
Literary Context
"Incident" appears in Natasha Trethewey's third collection of poems, Native Guard (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Many of the poems in Native Guard, including the title poem, explore intersections between American history and Trethewey's personal/family experience as a Black writer from the American South. Widely acclaimed throughout her career, Trethewey has served as both the Poet Laureate of her home state of Mississippi (2012) and the U.S. Poet Laureate (2012-2014).
The title of "Incident" alludes to a famous Countee Cullen poem by the same name, from the groundbreaking 1925 collection Color. Both poems follow a fixed form: Cullen's is a ballad; Trethewey's is a pantoum. In Cullen's "Incident," a Black speaker remembers being called a racial slur as an eight-year-old child. The speaker stresses the lasting pain of this experience, which overshadows their other memories from the same period.
By echoing one of the best-known poems of the Harlem Renaissance, Trethewey connects her speaker's experience to the broader history of American racial conflict, as well as a long tradition of Black literature that portrays, processes, and opposes racism. Specifically, her "Incident," like Cullen's, illustrates how even supposedly non-violent acts of racism—such as slurs and hate crimes—can scar their victims psychologically. (The Black American poet/playwright Amiri Baraka also borrowed the title "Incident" for a 1969 poem, though this one depicts a very violent scenario.)
Trethewey's use of the pantoum—a form adapted into English from the Malayan pantun—recalls other poems in which the pantoum's cyclical structure evokes the repetitions of memory and storytelling. A well-known example is Donald Justice's "Pantoum of the Great Depression" (1995), which also features a "We" speaker and explores family and community history.
Historical Context
The poem depicts a cross-burning of the kind historically associated with the Ku Klux Klan and other racist vigilantes. A form of racial terrorism (in modern terms, a hate crime), the practice is typically intended to threaten Black individuals and families.
Since the early 20th century, the Klan has burned crosses to harass Black families in primarily white neighborhoods, threaten Black activists and interracial couples, and generally intimidate community members of color. As depicted in the poem, these incidents have often involved local "white men" in "white [...] gowns" (i.e., the white robes of the Klan) burning large crosses on the lawns ("grass") of Black-owned homes. Black-owned businesses and historically Black churches have been targets as well. Some incidents have been accompanied or followed by other forms of racist violence. Though cross-burnings have declined since the early-to-mid-20th-century, due in part to federal hate crime laws, they still occur in America at the rate of roughly a few dozen per year.
As Trethewey explains in her introduction to the poem here, "Incident" is based on a real-life incident. Vigilantes burned a cross on her grandmother's lawn in the late 1960s, either to intimidate her family or to intimidate the church next door, which was leading a registration drive for Black voters.
Since Trethewey was born in 1966, she would have been very young at the time: a possible explanation for the speaker's unusual descriptions in the poem. For example, the memory of the cross-burners looking like "angels in their gowns" is clearly ironic, but the irony may stem from a child observer's confusion about what they were witnessing. Both the adult poet and the reader associate the "gowns" (Klan robes) with hatred and evil, but a small child wouldn't have understood their meaning.
-
-
More “Incident” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Trethewey, Poet Laureate — Browse the Library of Congress's online feature on Natasha Trethewey, the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States.
-
The Poem Aloud — Natasha Trethewey reads "Incident."
-
An Interview with the Poet — Watch an interview with Trethewey, courtesy of PBS NewsHour.
-
The Poet's Life and Work — Read a short biography of Trethewey at Poets.org.
-
Trethewey's Introduction — The poet reads "Incident" with an introduction about the incident it's based on.
-
Poetry and Racial Justice — Browse the Poetry Foundation's selection of poems about racial justice and equality, including "Incident."
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Natasha Trethewey
-
