Lawrence Hall, HSG
Phillis Wheatley:
A Sweet, Strong Voice
A friend mentioned that he had graduated from Phillis
Wheatley High School in Houston, which prompted me to re-read some of Wheatley’s
poetry.
Wheatley is an interesting writer of much historical
significance: she was an African, a British subject in bondage, an American
revolutionary activist in bondage, and then an American, granted manumission at
last not by the laws of any nation but of the later good will of those who had presumed
to own fellow humans. She is possibly the first American woman poet whose work
was published, though in England.
Because of her frail health and to seek publication for
her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the Wheatleys
sent her to England where, indeed, her book was published and she became a
celebrity.
She corresponded with and visited George Washington,
Thomas Paine, the Lord Mayor of London, the Countess of Huntingdon, British and
revolutionary army and navy officers, and other notables both in the colonies
and in England. Wheatley wrote to the King and was to have been presented to
him, but for reasons unknown returned or was returned to the colonies before
this could happen. She learned to read in English, Greek, and Latin, was
thoroughly versed in the Bible and in Greek and Roman mythology, and was often discreetly
subversive in her poetry and in her letters in appealing for the end of slavery:
May George belov’d of all the
nations round
Live and by earths and heavens
blessings crownd
May heaven protect and Guard him
from on high
And at his presence every evil
fly
Thus every clime with equal
gladness See
When kings to Smile it sets
their subjects Free
-from
“To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty on his Repealing the American Stamp Act,” 1768
Wheatley’s poetry is much influenced by Alexander Pope
and other Augustan / Georgian poets, and her highly skilled and carefully
structured verse, common to the 18th century, can be something of a
challenge for those us raised in a time when careless, unstructured, self-pitying,
I, I, I, me, me, me free verse passes for poetry.
After the revolution her English support languished and
although she assembled work for her second book these poems were not published
in her short lifetime. Because she wrote so many poems and letters to her many
friends and correspondents, fresh discoveries of her works continue.
The rest of Phillis Wheatley’s short life was tragic. She
made a bad marriage to an idler, her three children died young, she was reduced
to serving as a kitchen maid in a boarding house to support her family, and
died in poverty around the age of 31 in 1784.
Was Phillis Wheatley an African poet? English? American?
She was all three, reconciling multiple cultures in her sweet
but strong voice.
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