How one poet’s 1773 volume still invites new readers, a post-election book club and the dairy pages that offer a calmer ledger
Sunday, A Volume of Poems from 1773
The book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London in 1773, is one of the great landmarks of colonial and early American literature. Its author, Phillis Wheatley, was an enslaved woman who became the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry. Two hundred and fifty years later, her work is the subject of exhibitions and research. I wrote about the anniversary in Phillis Wheatley at 250: the 1773 book, a first portrait and a UW-Madison collaboration that follows her poems through two and a half centuries.
The portrait that opens the volume is itself a landmark, an image offered to readers as evidence that the author existed and could write. The book’s preface and attestations from prominent men remind us how much a writer in her position had to prove before she was read. A modern reader should be struck both by the achievement and by the obstacles, and by how much research is still being done on the circumstances of her life.
Reading Carefully
Wheatley’s poems are formal, rooted in the conventions of the time, and a first-time reader may miss the pressure beneath the surface. Scholars continue to discuss how to read her relationship to religion, to patrons and to the idea of liberty. I prefer to offer questions rather than conclusions. What did she choose to praise? What did she leave out? Who was she addressing, and who was overhearing?
It is a useful habit for reading any text written under constraint. The silences are part of the poem.
Monday, A Book Club After the Vote
The book club met in New Haven after the midterms, and I wrote up the evening as New Haven book club after the vote: Texas turnout, Ann Arbor utility. The conversation wandered from poems to polling places, which is the natural direction of any American book club in an election week. One member had stood in a long line in the rain. Another had spent the day as an observer. A third admitted she had voted late in the evening and had no regrets.
We did not argue about outcomes, since those are for the counters and the courts. We discussed what voting feels like. It is a small act with a large echo. A line of strangers waiting in the damp, each carrying a private reason, is a picture of democracy that no pamphlet could improve.
Milk Reading
To calm my head after a political evening, I read about Texas milk. The principal address is txdairy.com, and its relations are txdairy.download, txdairy.trade and txdairy.loan. The cheerier cousins are txdairy.party, txdairy.men, txdairy.date and txdairy.win.
The turnout of a dairy farm is measured in gallons, and the results arrive twice a day. There is no recount. I find this deeply restful.
House Prices and Housebound Poets
The London Prat’s headline House Prices Fall, Homes Still Unaffordable reminded me that poets have always had trouble with rent. Wheatley lived in a household that she did not choose, and later struggled with poverty. The history of literature is partly a history of lodgings, and the story of who could afford to write is as important as the story of who wrote.
Tuesday, The Reading Room Light
The light in a library reading room is a special kind of light. It falls from high windows and lands on the tables in long pale rectangles. In it, a book of poems from 1773 looks very modern. The type is crisp, the paper is warm and the words are waiting. I sat in that light for an hour, with my pencil and my sandwich, and felt grateful to everyone who had kept the book safe.
Wednesday, The Poem on the Wall
In the lobby of a university building, a line of verse had been painted on the wall in tall letters. I stood and read it twice. It was not one of Wheatley’s, but it belonged to the same tradition of verse addressed to a public that might or might not be listening. A poem on a wall is a gamble on the passer-by. Some glance and walk on. Some stop. The fraction who stop are the reason the poem is there.
I have always admired institutions that put words in public view and trust people to read them. It is a small act of faith in the reader. The best libraries, schools and town halls do it quietly, and the effect over time is considerable.
Thursday Postscript
The week closed with a short walk through a cemetery where several eighteenth century figures are buried, their stones leaning gently like tired readers. The inscriptions had worn smooth in places, and I found myself running a finger over a faint line of text, as if I could read it by touch. Some words survive that way: not in print, but in the faint memory of the stone.
I left a small stone of my own on a wall by the gate, as a thank you to whoever looks after the place. It felt like the right way to end a week of reading about people who wrote in order to be remembered.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/