Today I'm reading up on some poet biographies. Given that it is the 4th of July holiday still, I thought I would concentrate on a couple of American poets. Things I've learned so far:
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Phillis Wheatley was from what is approximately modern Senegal in West Africa.
-Even though Wheatley was "discovered" as smart early on in her life, they still made her work. She wrote poems about how she wished she could stop being a servant and live the life of an academic.
-Wheatley published broadsides, which, for those of you not totally obsessed with the literary world, is a poster version of a poem, usually printed so that the words are indented into the page, so you can "feel" the word. Broadsides are sort of a lost art in our culture, but I can assure you they're really cool.
-Wheatley had asthma. I honestly wasn't even sure people back then knew what it was.
-When most Americans wouldn't publish Wheatley's work, she turned to a publisher in London.
-Wheatley got to meet other famous people, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
-A lot of Wheatley's poems were written in couplets, including iambic pentameter (that's what much of Shakespeare is in) and heroic (which is the form favored by epics.) This indicates to me that she must have been educated in the classics. She also wrote about death, which everyone knows is a favored topic of poets.
-Many British readers were uncomfortable with Wheatley's slave status. They often criticized her "family" and owners for keeping her in slavery. However, as a house slave, she got to avoid many of the worst aspects of slavery or the tough life of being a free slave in an overtly racist country.
-Her husband was John Peters, who was a free black. He may have been a lawyer. Since he was ambitious, a lot of white Americans hated him.
-"Refugee" slaves were slaves that were considered too sickly to work on things like sugar plantations in the Caribbean, so they were sold off as house servants in other parts of the world, including New England.
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Walt Whitman's father was a admirer and friend of Thomas Paine.
-Whitman was part of the first generation of American children.
-Whitman's brothers and sisters were given patriotic names, including Andrew Jackson, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
-As a child, Whitman was apparently picked out of a crowd by the Marquis de Lafayette (who was instrumental in providing French support during the Revolution.) and carried young Whitman on his back.
-Whitman's relationship with his father was imperfect; he respected him but they were never close. There is some indication that his father may have been an alcoholic. Whitman had a close relationship with his mother.
-Like Shakespeare, Whitman didn't have a lot of formal schooling. He spent six years in a public school in Brooklyn, and at around twelve began working. Whitman continued his education by spending time renting books from a library.
-Whitman liked Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. He liked Shakespeare's
Richard III, which I also love.
-Whitman was not just a writer but a publisher, beginning with become an apprentice printer as a young man, at around twelve or thirteen.
