S1E1 - A Letter to Phillis Wheatley, Part 1

A Letter to Phillis Wheatley, Part 1

Chiyuma Elliott and Chad Hegelmeyer

Season 1, Episode 1

Phillis Wheatley was both the first African American woman to publish poetry and a poet deeply engaged with the classical works of antiquity. Chi and Chad discuss how writers and readers have dealt with that complex legacy through Robert Hayden’s 1976 poem, “A Letter from Phillis Wheatley, London 1773.”

Sources and references:

Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

“On Being Brought from Africa to America”

“Niobe in Distress for Her Children, Slain by Apollo”

“Ode to Neptune”

“On Recollection”

Robert Hayden, “A Letter from Phillis Wheatley, London 1773”

Robert Hayden’s reading of the poem in the Library of Congress

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Age of Phillis

Phillis Wheatley Hall, UMass Boston

SS Phyllis Wheatley

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV

Tara Bynum, “Chasing Phillis Wheatley”

Further Reading:

David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley