Until Forgiveness Comes; Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley
13. K. Tempest Bradford, "Until Forgiveness Comes."
As Tempest discusses here, this is inspired by, and commentary on, the anniversary ceremony conducted at Ground Zero. As a west-coaster, I am disinclined to make much comment, except to say that Tempest hits themes that matter to me very much.
14. June Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley."
Creative nonfic -- plus something like a sonnet! -- that serves as both a biography of and an ode to Phillis Wheatley, firmly positioning her as "the first" in the "not natural" enterprise of Black poetry in America: the first to negotiate the "difficult miracle" of persisting, regardless of being published, regardless of being loved.
I had never realized, until Jordan pointed it out, that Wheatley's surviving poems are juvenilia, written while she was enslaved and with the blessing and patronage of her owners; the poetry she wrote as a free adult, married to a law student who argued for universal emancipation, was never published. Jordan then draws the line forward to 1985 (the year of this essay's publication), to judging poetry prizes where all of the finalists are white:But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.
But not otherwise. And yet we persist.
And it was not natural. And she was the first.
As Tempest discusses here, this is inspired by, and commentary on, the anniversary ceremony conducted at Ground Zero. As a west-coaster, I am disinclined to make much comment, except to say that Tempest hits themes that matter to me very much.
14. June Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley."
Creative nonfic -- plus something like a sonnet! -- that serves as both a biography of and an ode to Phillis Wheatley, firmly positioning her as "the first" in the "not natural" enterprise of Black poetry in America: the first to negotiate the "difficult miracle" of persisting, regardless of being published, regardless of being loved.
I had never realized, until Jordan pointed it out, that Wheatley's surviving poems are juvenilia, written while she was enslaved and with the blessing and patronage of her owners; the poetry she wrote as a free adult, married to a law student who argued for universal emancipation, was never published. Jordan then draws the line forward to 1985 (the year of this essay's publication), to judging poetry prizes where all of the finalists are white:But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.
But not otherwise. And yet we persist.
And it was not natural. And she was the first.