#phillis wheatley

[linsaad]

C’est la grâce qui m’a amenée de ma terre païenne,

Qui a appris à mon âme aveugle à comprendre

Qu’il y a un Dieu, et qu’il y a un Sauveur également:

Un temps je ne cherchais ni connaissais la rédemption.

Les uns regardent notre race d’ébène d’un œil méprisant,

"Leur couleur est la teinture du diable."

Rappelez-vous, Chrétiens, que les Nègres, noirs comme Caïn,

Peuvent être purifiés et s’unir au cortège des anges.

[linsaad]

Moi, si jeune, par un cruel destin, Fut arrachée à mon heureuse Afrique: Quelle intolérable douleur, Quelle innommable tristesse pour mes parents meurtris ? Une grande détresse emplit l’âme De l’enfant chérie arrachée à son père. Telle fut ma situation et je ne peux que prier Qu’aucun ne souffrit plus pareille tyrannie ?

[julesncfl]

if you think about it for a moment

april, march, and february all apply to phillis wheatley

april is national poetry month

march is women’s history month

february is black history month

it’s phillis wheatley season

[getupinthemorningglory]

In honor of Women's History Month, I felt like sharing some information on a few (in my personal experience) less talked about figures in women's history. I've tried to include a mix of more contemporary women as well as historical.

Phillis Wheatley: The first African-American woman to be a published poet, and the writer of one of my favorite poems On Imagination (1773)

Rigoberta Menchú: A Guatemalan advocate for women and indigenous peoples' rights who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992

The Mirabal Sisters: Three sisters - Minerva, Patria, and Maria-Teresa - dubbed "Las Mariposas" for the work in opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo

Lucy Stone: An abolitionist and suffragist who campaigned for political and social reform. Also the first woman in Massachusetts to be awarded a university degree.

Susan Nalugwa Kiguli: A Ugandan poet and professor of literature. One of my favorite poets of all time. I highly recommend The African Saga.

Nettie Stevens: The discoverer of sex chromosomes and their role in sex differentiation

This is obviously not nearly all the women who have contributed to the future of humanity. If anyone else has any figures they'd like to share, I would be really grateful!

[iphigeniacomplex]

It was not natural. And she was the first.

Last week, as the final judge for this year's Loft McKnight Awards in creative writing, awards distributed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I read through sixteen manuscripts of rather fine poetry.

These are the terms, the lexical items, that I encountered there:

Rock, moon, star, roses, chimney, Prague, elms, lilac, railroad tracks, lake, lilies, snow geese, crow, mountain, arrow feathers, ear of corn, marsh, sandstone, rabbit-bush, gulley, pumpkins, eagle, tundra, dwarf willow, dipper-bird, brown creek, lizards, sycamores, glacier, canteen, skate eggs, birch, spruce, pumphandle

Is anything about that listing odd? I didn't suppose so. These are the terms, the lexical items accurate to the specific white Minnesota daily life of those white poets.

And so I did not reject these poems, I did not despise them saying, "How is this possible? Sixteen different manuscripts of poetry written in 1985 and not one of them uses the terms of my own Black life! Not one of them writes about the police murder of Eleanor Bumpurs or the Bernard Goetz shooting of four Black boys or apartheid in South Africa, or unemployment, or famine in Ethiopia, or rape, or fire escapes, or cruise missiles in the New York harbor, or medicare, or alleyways, or napalm, or $4.00 an hour, and no time off for lunch.

I did not and I would not presume to impose my urgencies upon white poets writing in America. But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.

But not otherwise. And yet we persist.

And it was not natural. And she was the first.

This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America: that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.

And this is: “Something Like A Sonnet for Phillis Miracle Wheatley”: -

Girl from the realm of birds florid and fleet flying full feather in far or near weather Who fell to a dollar lust coffled like meat Captured by avarice and hate spit together Trembling asthmatic alone on the slave block built by a savagery travelling by carriage viewed like a species of flaw in the livestock A child without safety of mother or marriage Chosen by whimsy but born to surprise They taught you to read but you learned how to write Begging the universe into your eyes: They dressed you in light but you dreamed with the night. From Africa singing of justice and grace, Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race.

And because we Black people in North America persist in an irony profound, Black poetry persists in this way:

Like the trees of winter and like the snow which has no power makes very little sound but comes and collects itself edible light on the black trees The tall black trees of winter lifting up a poetry of snow so that we may be astounded by the poems of Black trees inside a cold environment

— June Jordan, “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America, or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley”

[iphigeniacomplex]

To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works by Phillis Wheatley

To show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue; On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire, To aid thy pencil and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown’d with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.    Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas’d away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav'nly transport glow; No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes; For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle Muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight.

[iphigeniacomplex]

To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth by Phillis Wheatley

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold. Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd, Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land. Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore. May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name, But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

[agoth-ay]