Prize Winning Poet Is The Guest Of Honor At Mutter Museum Exhibit Opening
By Justin Udo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A Pulitzer prize-winning guest of honor helped The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and The Mütter Museum open their newest exhibit.
The new display called "Broken Bodies and Broken Spirits" focuses on injury, death and healing in Civil War Philadelphia.
And as part of its opening celebration, United States poet laureate Natasha Trethewey read poems from her work centering on black soldiers during the war.
"Here we are at the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and we are still learning more and adding more to our knowledge about the war in general."
The exhibition showcases medical treatments and examinations of black solders throughout that period. Trethewey's poems in her book Native Guard give a fictional account of how black men fighting in the war may have felt.
"The soldier that I'm writing about is very concerned with how the war going to be remembered and how African-American participation in the war would be remembered or how it might be forgotten."
The exhibit also takes a look at many advancements in medicine that came about during this period.
