Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley is considered American’s first black poet. She was very intelligent and learned how to read and write as a child. She wrote her first poem at the age of thirteen. She became famous when she wrote the poem on Reverend George Whitefield’s death in 1770. Three years later, her poems were published in London as a book called Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. It was the first book to be published by a black American. Her life experiences influenced most of her poetry like her poem On Being Brought from Africa to America. It talks about her experience and how she felt.

Wheatley’s poetry would be considered as concrete poetry. The poems, On Being Brought from Africa to America and To His Excellency General Washington, rhyme and have almost the exact same spacing in each line. She does use plenty of punctuation in her poems, making them easier to understand and to show how the lines should be read. Therefore, she is connecting to pathos. The use of punctuation illustrates the emotion within her poetry. In the poem, To His Excellency of General Washington, she has four lines that are indented. I believe they are indented because they may be a start to another idea.

In the poem, On Being Brought from Africa to America, she talks about how all of the slaves got taken of their land by the white people and how they didn’t like the African race. “Some view our race with scornful eye…” In To His Excellency General Washington, she honors him and his efforts to make America a free country. She talks about how he is standing up for America to become free, referencing to the French and Indian War. Her purpose for sending Washington this poem was to give Washington confidence in what he was doing for the country and how she was behind him the whole way. For example, “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side, Thy every action let the goddess guide…”

The persona is not different than the author. She expresses her own emotions and point of views. In the poems, she has a poems based on a character. In one of them, she writes about herself and other Africans and their experience on being brought to America. She writes about Washington in the poem and also refers to a “freedom goddess”.

Though Wheatley’s poems were a bit hard to understand, I felt the emotion she tried to get across to her audience. She used pathos to grab attention from the audience. Her word choices were confusing, like when she said “Columbia” instead of just saying America. Also, she must have been well educated on the subject of Washington. That poems was written very well.