PHILLIS WHEATLEY (1753?-1784), AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN WHO WAS A SLAVE AND A POET, BECAME THE FIRST BLACK AMERICAN TO BE PUBLISHED. THE CITY OF BOSTON ERECTED A STATUE OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY, ENGRAVED WITH THE WORDS OF HER POEM “ON IMAGINATION” AS PART OF THE BOSTON WOMEN’S MEMORIAL.
Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), an eighteenth-century African-American woman who was a slave and a poet, was the first black American to be published. She is also credited with originating the genres of African-American poetry and African-American women’s literature.
Due to the fact that no one in America was willing to print her works, her first writings were actually published in London, England. In fact, Americans initially doubted that a slave woman could have written these poems, and so Wheatley was subjected to an interrogation by several prominent Bostonian men to determine whether she did indeed write them. They concluded that she did.
The statue is part of the Boston Women’s Memorial on Commonwealth Avenue between Arlington St. and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. It is part of a series of three statues of Bostonian women by Meredith Bergmann: Phillis Wheatley, Abigail Adams, and Lucy Stone.
This poem, which gives a taste of her work, is inscribed on the memorial:
“Imagination! Who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.”
NOTE: I must apologize to you all for not providing the photos of her statue. I tried to add them on here but I could not make it work. Please trust me--it's a beautful statue!
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, January 14th 2010 at 8:49AM
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