Wheatley's grave...

29 June 2025: We had a good day in Boston, but the part I keep thinking about is Copp's Hill Burial Ground. At lunch, I read that Phillis Wheatley was buried there and instantly knew I wanted us to stop by. 

Now if I had read a bit closer, I would have learned that it is believed she is buried there--in what was an unmarked grave in plot for Black Americans--with her newborn baby who died just around the time she did. 

And if I had thought about it more closely, I would have doubted that her burial spot would have been much for anyone to commemorate back in 1784.

But it still felt right and good to walk there, to walk around the grounds, and feel both her presence and her absense.  

"Phillis Reimagined"

26 September 2020: Catching up on the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast today and really enjoyed this episode. Added The Age of Phillis to my reading list.

"Diabolic"

15 July 2020:

"How they say they love her
And how they look at her
Is what Phillis observes;
Like she’s the hole in the pocket
After the money rolls out." --Cornelius Eady, "Diabolic"

The poem Eady is writing about here--Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America"--is one of my favorite to teach. Eady's work is a terrific contemplation of what Wheatley must have thought in her very complicated and circumscribed world, where she was repeatedly fed conflicting ideologies and still managed to create powerful, lasting, and fundamentally American art. (Love that Eady calls "On Being Brought" "one of the most American poems I think we have.")

Temptation everywhere!

5 August 2019: When you are trying to focus on your very specific topic but a gosh-darn Phillis Wheatley manuscript pops up in the collection you are examining and you can't believe it is in your hand. (Also popping up: Emerson, Alcott, Stowe. Temptation/distraction everywhere!)

Dipping my toe into the virtual lake...

12 May 2018: Over this past week, I have been completing Shepherd's online teaching certification course, basically the class you have to take to be allowed to teach online. I have about zero interest in teaching online during the regular semester, almost entirely because so much of my teaching is discussion-based and I just can't think of how I could make the adjustment. (This is actually more a criticism of myself than of teaching online.) But for summer classes, which I have struggled a bit to fill recently, it might make sense to at least try it. Like the little kid refusing to eat broccoli, I need to try it before I dismiss it. So I am taking the class which more or less concludes today.

I can see lots of potential (and work!) if someone wanted to do this right. And it's been kind of fun (sort of?) playing around with some of the tools out there.

Here's one example. I know it's boring and the sound is terrible (long story), but I think it's kind of cool.

Day one...

28 August 2017: "Ha. It's so good to be back!" --a student in my ENGL 312 class.

You see, we were discussing Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America" and she realized how clever the poet is in her use of "Cain," evoking its homophone ("cane") and thereby subtly calling to mind the slave economy. Like so many readers (myself included, way back when), she missed it on the first read-through and delighted in realizing it.

That laugh and that comment: pure English major. She missed this stuff and is thrilled to be back at it.

Me, too.