My Name is Phillis Wheatley by Afua Cooper

Author:Afua Cooper [Cooper, Afua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Children's Fiction
ISBN: 9781525308284
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Published: 2009-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Making of a Poet

My first poem to be published was “On Messrs Hussey and Coffin.” It told the story of two Nantucket gentlemen who were on their way to Boston when their ship sailed into a hurricane off Cape Cod. They narrowly escaped death. The Wheatleys invited the two men to dinner one evening, and as I served them I heard them tell their story. Shipwrecked and near death. I knew these well from my journey on the slave ship Phillis. In my mind’s eye, I saw their ship pushed to and fro by Boreas, the god of the north wind, and Eolus, king of the four winds. Even as I served the gentlemen, the poem formed in my mind. At the close of the evening, the words simply flowed through my fingers onto paper.

Did fear and danger so perplex your Mind,

As made you fearful of the Whistling Wind?

Was it not Boreas knit his angry Brow

Against you? or did Consideration bow?

To lend you Aid, did not his Winds combine?

To stop your passage with a churlish line,

Did haughty Eolus with Contempt look down

With Aspect windy, and a study’d Frown?

My mistress was so impressed that she sent the poem to several New England newspapers. The Newport Mercury of Rhode Island published it on 21 December 1767. I was thirteen years old. Soon all of Boston was speaking of the “Negro poetess, slave of Mr. Wheatley.”

I wrote poem after poem. Mistress was proud of my achievements and organized small readings and performance parties for the cream of Boston society. My first reading was at the Wheatleys’. Mistress and Master invited a few guests, among them Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the distinguished Reverend Samuel Cooper (our next-door neighbor). I was nervous, but Mistress told me to believe in the power of my own verse, and the guests were encouraging.

It was one thing to read to the Wheatleys, but quite another to read in front of others. My tongue felt like lead in my mouth. Nervousness made me read in a squeaky voice. But that did not seem to matter. What mattered was that I, a slave, had written the poems. Many found this unbelievable, and most thought of me as an oddity, as my mistress’s great experiment: the slave who was a poet. The slave who recited poetry. What a curiosity!

But many people were kind. Reverend Cooper gave me a book of John Donne’s poetry, and Governor Hutchinson gave me a text on rhetoric. Invitations abounded for me to give recitals in the homes of Boston’s finest. Sometimes, my mistress or master received a small sum of money for my performances. In the summer, when the Wheatleys, like other fashionable Bostonians, retired to Newport to escape Boston’s stifling heat, I gave readings in the homes of Newport’s high society. Yet, for all the adulation, though I was a “genius,” I was still an African, a slave, and not their equal. How could they say I had a “superior” mind and then refuse me a place at their dining table? The slaves took great pleasure in my recitals.

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