The Book of American Negro Poetry | Page 6

through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern white man and all of his activities are impassably limited by the ever present Negro problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken puts it, in all that vast region, with its thirty or forty million people and its territory as large as a half a dozen Frances or Germanys, there is not a single poet, not a serious historian, not a creditable composer, not a critic good or bad, not a dramatist dead or alive.
But, even so, the American Negro has accomplished something in pure literature. The list of those who have done so would be surprising both by its length and the excellence of the achievements. One of the great books written in this country since the Civil War is the work of a colored man, "The Souls of Black Folk," by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Such a list begins with Phillis Wheatley. In 1761 a slave ship landed a cargo of slaves in Boston. Among them was a little girl seven or eight years of age. She attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy gentleman of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his wife. Mrs. Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She noticed the girl's quick mind and determined to give her opportunity for its development. Twelve years later Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was brought out in London, where Phillis was for several months an object of great curiosity and attention.
Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful place in American literature. By some sort of conspiracy she is kept out of most of the books, especially the text-books on literature used in the schools. Of course, she is not a great American poet--and in her day there were no great American poets--but she is an important American poet. Her importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she is the first in order of time of all the women poets of America. And she is among the first of all American poets to issue a volume.
It seems strange that the books generally give space to a mention of Urian Oakes, President of Harvard College, and to quotations from the crude and lengthy elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples from the execrable versified version of the Psalms made by the New England divines, and yet deny a place to Phillis Wheatley.
Here are the opening lines from the elegy by Oakes, which is quoted from in most of the books on American literature:
"Reader, I am no poet, but I grieve.?Behold here what that passion can do,?That forced a verse without Apollo's leave,?And whether the learned sisters would or no."
There was no need for Urian to admit what his handiwork declared. But this from the versified Psalms is still worse, yet it is found in the books:
"The Lord's song sing can we? being?in stranger's land, then let?lose her skill my right hand if I?Jerusalem forget."
Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little over twenty years. She published her volume of poems, "The Tenth Muse," in 1750. Let us strike a comparison between the two. Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy, cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Bay Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us take them both at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza is from Anne's poem entitled "Contemplation":
"While musing thus with contemplation fed,?And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,?The sweet tongued Philomel percht o'er my head,?And chanted forth a most melodious strain,?Which rapt me so with wonder and delight,?I judged my hearing better than my sight,?And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight."
And the following is from Phillis' poem entitled "Imagination":
"Imagination! who can sing thy force??Or who describe the swiftness of thy course??Soaring through air to find the bright abode,?The empyreal palace of the thundering 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 the unbounded soul."
We do not think the black woman suffers much by comparison with the white. Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis: "Religion has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet; her poems are beneath contempt." It is quite likely that Jefferson's criticism was directed more against religion than against Phillis' poetry. On the other hand, General George Washington wrote her with his own hand a letter in which he thanked her for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later, received her with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge.
It appears certain that Phillis was the