Whole Wheatley

This is Ben checking in...
Today's english class was one that started out like any other. It was like any lethargic early Thursday morning. Yawns were the norm, last second AP Bio homework was the norm (thank god I don't do that class), and a general sense of "How will Laz evily amuse us today?" was the norm. My congrats go out to Arka for arriving to class on time today. I truly was impressed.
I knew I'd have to be astute today because I was awarded the honor of the "class recap-er". This meant no sleeping, no drooling, no pretending to listen but actually staring at the pins on Mr. Lazarow's desk, no daydreaming about lunch, no daydreaming about dinner, and absolutely NO arguing. Damn. "This day is going to suck" I thought. But then...as if by fate...Mr. Lazarow made the announcement. It was Phillis Wheatley Day!!!
Muse, inspire my pen, and by pen i mean keyboard, to write about the days happenings...
Well...here's the deal, here's the summary, here's the recap, or, as the say in certain small yet scary areas of inner city Camden, "here's what went down."
Phillis Wheatley was a slave from West Africa who worked for a rich Boston family. She was one of the most well known poets of her time and her owners, although they did not entirely excuse her from household duties, allowed her to be well educated.
Yesterday we talked mostly about her letter to General Washington (see yesterday's post) but today we focused mostly on her short poem called "On being brought from AFRICA to AMERICA." It is important to stress strongly that her poems in NO WAY encourage the abolition of slavery. In this poem she reminds the Christains that other Negros, too, can "refine" their souls and join the "angelic train" by converting to Christianity from Paganism, as she had.
She uses self depricating language by calling her old soul "benighted" and calling her race "sable". This is definatley not a poem intended for herself to read and is pretty clearly addressed to others. It was interesting that in the second to last line of the poem the negroes are reffered to as "black as Cain", and Cain was the first murderer, a Pagan, who would therefore not be saved by God. Although the poem title suggests a change in location (Africa to America) the deeper meaning of the poem deals more with a change of her soul from a non-Christian soul to a Christian soul.
We also talked about her poem "ON IMAGINATION". We only started talking about it with about 3 minutes left i nthe class period but we were able to establish some common themes in all of her poetry by lookign at it. One thign she liekd to do was make up Godesses. In her letter to Washington she makes up Columbia and in this poem she makes up the godess "Fancy".
Her poems are also full of classical references. In Washington's letter he mentions Eolus, Muse, and even Mother Earth and in "On Imagination" she includes Helicon and Aurora.
In short, Phillis Wheatley was lucky to receive the education she did and she put her hard studies to good use by writing two main types of poems, a) Christianity poems, and b) poems that glorified America.