Soulcatcher: And other stories

Poetry and Politics

"PHILLIS, HAVE YOU a moment to talk?"

"Of course, ma'am, but should you be up at this hour? The doctor said—"

"I know what he said. Pooh! You've been reminding me of it every day since you returned from England, which I wish you'd not done for my sake. I'm an old woman, and far poorer company, I would guess, than the Countess of Huntingdon and Benjamin Franklin. He isn't really a nudist, is he?"

"To hear others tell it, yes! I swear I heard them say it! And you're not poor company. I'd rather be here, helping you and Master John, than riding in carriages from one court to another in London and being called the 'Sable Muse.' Isn't that silly? I've never seen so many people astonished — there and here — that an Ethiop could write verse!"

"No, not an Ethiop. They're dazzled, and well should they be, at a girl barely thirteen translating Ovid from the Latin and publishing her first book at twenty. I daresay you are a prodigy, probably the most gifted poet in New England"

"Oh my… Better than Michael Wigglesworth?"

"Leagues beyond him, my dear."

"Perhaps you are… biased. Is that possible?"

"Not a'tall…"

"But Mr. Jefferson, his opinion of my work is less than laudatory."

"As is my opinion of him. Come now, show me what you're working on. That is a new poem, isn't it? Is that why you're up before cock's crow?"

"Oh, I couldn't sleep! But, no! Don't look! Give it back, please. I know it's not good. At least not yet. It could be years before it's ready—"

"I just want to see. May I? Well… this is a departure for you. 'On the Necessity of Negro Manumussion.' What prompted you to begin this?"

"You… and Master John."

"How so?"

"Just prior to sending me to London for medical treatment you granted me manumission—"

"We were worried. Your health has always been frail."

"— and when I was there I discovered that everyone of my color was free. Just a few months before I arrived, Chief Justice Mansfield passed a ruling that freed all the slaves in England. I was thinking, would that we had such a ruling here!"

"But there are free black men and women in Boston."

"Yes, and they live miserably, ma'am! My contact with them is slight, but I've seen them languishing in poverty and ostracized by white Christians. I wonder sometimes what they think of me. I imagine some mock the models I've chosen — Alexander Pope — and my piety and the patriotism of my verse, such as the poem to General Washington, which you know I labored long and hard upon, though he is a slaveholder (and who replied not at all to my gift), so that, the hardest work sometimes, at least for me, has been to honor in my verse the principles of the faith that brought me freedom, yet — and yet — I have not spoken of its failures, here in New England or in the slaveholding states that justify my people's oppression by twisting scripture."

"Must you speak of these things?"

"Yes, I think so…"

"Is this why you could not sleep last night?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Phillis… are you… unhappy here?"

"No, no! That's not what I'm saying. I'm thankful for the blessing that brought me from Senegal to America. Thankful that you took on the sickly child that I was, carried me here to be a companion for you, taught me to write and read, and introduced me to Horace and Virgil, associates with whom I can spend hours, and ne'er once have they rebuked me for my complexion—"

"The finest thoughts have no complexion."

"So I have believed, ma'am. I believe that still. But while the greatest thoughts and works of literature and the gatekeepers of heaven vouchsafe no distinctions based on color, the worst prejudices and passions of man reign throughout the colonies. Will it not be odd, a hundred years hence, when readers open Poems on furious Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, and discover that in not a single poem do I address the anguish of bondage, the daily horror that is happening around us, the evil of men bleeding their sable brethren for profit? Will I not be suspect? Or censured? For it is our hope — isn't it? — that freedom will come to all? If it does, ma'am, what will free Negroes think of me? That I wrote nothing to further our cause?"

"Would you become a pamphleteer then? A writer of newspaper articles?"

"Well, no, but—"

"And why not a pamphleteer?"

"It's obvious why, isn't it? At the end of the day one wraps garbage in newspapers. And while a pamphlet can be valuable and stir people to action, a hundred years hence it may be forgotten — as the injustice it assails is forgotten — or it will be preserved only as a historical document, interesting for what it reveals about a moment long past, but never appreciated as art I'm speaking of writing poems about oppression."

"Is poetry the right means for that?"

"How do you mean?"

"Tell me, Phillis, what is it about Virgil, Pope, and Horace that you love? Come now, don't be shy."

"The beauty, which age does not wear—"

"And?"

"The truth…"

"Which is timeless, no?"

"Yes, that's right."

"May I suggest something?"

"Please."

"I cannot read tea leaves so I have no idea what the future will bring or how your poetry will be received in the colonies a century from now. But of one thing I can assure you: You can never be censured. You are the first internationally celebrated woman poet in the colonies. The first American poet of your people. I'm sure they will take pride in your achievement, as John and I do. And you, my dear, are — by nature and temperament — a poet, regardless of what Jefferson says. You are not a pamphleteer. Your job is simple. I did not say easy, for no one knows better than you how difficult it is to create even one line of verse worth passing along to the next generation, or a poem that speaks to the heart of Christendom — white and colored — on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a noble calling, Phillis, this creating of beauty, and it is sufficient unto itself."

"Is it? Sometimes I wonder if my people see me — my work — as useless."

"Useless?"

"It doesn't serve their liberation, does it?"

"Why? Because you do not catalog horrors? Only praise what on these shores is praiseworthy?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Dear, dear Phillis…"

"Why are you laughing? What did I say? Am I amusing?"

"Oh no, of course not! But would you call Benjamin Banneker's work useless?"

"Hardly! While still a boy, he built from wood the first clock made wholly in America. From what I hear, it keeps perfect time to this very day."

"What, then, of Santomee?"

"Who?"

"He was a slave in New York, one trained in Holland, who practiced medicine among the Dutch and English, probably saving many lives. And there is Onesimus, who in 1721 came up with an antidote for the smallpox. All of them proved the genius of your people. All of them enriched others through their deeds, thereby providing in the example of their persons, and the universal value of their products, the most devastating broadside against the evils of Negro bondage imaginable. And you have done no less."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"Thank you, ma'am. You are most kind."

"Will you continue, then, with this bristling, new poem?"

"Perhaps, if I can find my way into it. The problem is not that I don't feel outrage whenever I read or see or hear of injustice, it's rather that I fear I have no real talent for that sort of writing and rhetoric. For things I hate. I think I can compose passably well a hymn to morning, but as soon as I turn my pen to painting a portrait of a slave suffering beneath the lash, I cut myself off from what flows most easily from me — the things I love — and the words fall woodenly, unconvincingly, onto the page."

"No, it's not your best work."

"You're not supposed to say that!"

"Sorry! I was just agreeing with you, that's all. You needn't bite my head off!"

"You're supposed to tell me it's good."

"Fine, it's good."

"You don't mean that."

"You're right, I don't, but I'm in no mood for an argument before breakfast. And it's not why I wanted to talk to you."

"Why did you?"

"You know how yesterday I felt poorly and stayed in bed?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I didn't bother with the post. All the mail, scented and sealed with candle wax, sat on a wig stand until I awoke this morning. I began looking through it, and I found a letter addressed to you. Perhaps I shouldn't give it to you if you're planning now on starting a new life as a composer of pamphlets."

"Oh, please! Who is it from?"

"Phillis, I think you should sit down."

"Who?"

"May I read it to you?"

"I can read!"

"But I would enjoy it so!"

"All right, then! Read!"

"Ahem…

"Miss Phillis,

Your favor ofthe 26th of October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted But a variety of important occurances, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints…. If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great respect…

Your obedient, humble servant,

George Washington"

"He said… servant?"

"Here, see for yourself."

"This a complicated time, isn't it?"

"Yes, dear, I think it is."