The Age of Phillis by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Jezrie: I love this book I would probably get this in hard copy and encase it in glass, and have lights on it and stuff because it’s so pretty! I also watched the YouTube video…there were a few poems that really spoke to me. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I have a poetry mind. I will go to the one that is the absolute hands down favorite: Catalog: Water: The Zong 1781-1783 on pages 29 through 36. The part that was the absolute gut-punch for me were pages 34 – 36:
A heavy rain had fallen.
There was no shortage
Of water,
not anymore,
but even so,
the crew of The Zong
drowned a third batch
of Africans, and then
the ship
sailed on its way.
That’s all.
The ship sailed on its way.
No prayers.
The ship sailed on its way.
No funerals.
The ship sailed on its way. –
_________________________
My sleep
is haunted
By chains and catalogs,
And I
don’t give one damn
If you grow tired of hearing
About slavery.
I will curse sailors and
Their willful, seafaring tales.
_______________________________
Don’t you know that
Drowned folks will rise
To croon signs to me?
And anyway, I didn’t tell
This story to please you.
I built this altar for them.
Honoree then put in the letters between Phillis and John.
Page 127
Free
Negro Courtship #2
Maybe if he did things right,
She might link her black life with his.
His
desire to protect her from ships,
Step between his black woman and sailors.
His vow that sang over water
To
where her black parents might hear:
He didn’t just
desire their black daughter-
He was honorable. He intended.-
Marian: one of the ones I found ironic was the one she
wrote to George Washington with the cross-outs
p.139 Fragment #3: First Draft of An Extant
Letter, Phillis Wheatley, Providence,
To
General George Washington,
Cambridge
Headquarters
in the enclosed poem filled with desperate
attempts to prick your male vanity and
entreat your acceptance you should be glad
I wrote though I am not insensible
Of your cruel aversion to Negro
Men who fight for the indefensible
Your Excellency’s most obedient
Servant this humility is tedious
Marian: Honoree is the author and after 15 years of
research this is her imagined perception of Phillis Wheatley
Marsha: I’m not a poetry person…I treated this like an
assignment…I got up to page 37…I’m reading it more like prose and history…the
whole thing with the detained children out west and the black bodies taken from
Africa. I’m listening to Jezrie and I’m amazed… Phillis Wheatley was boring to
me. Those of us that were taught that little snippet of slavery thought that
slavery wasn’t so bad for her, not realizing that Susannah Wheatley was saying
to her, “if you have children, your children won’t be treated as well as we
treat you.” We didn’t realize that she eventually had her adult life. I was
thinking she had it good to be a slave but she wasn’t her own person. I think I
probably did understand that there was something wrong with the picture, she
was basically a doll to these people. I had very mixed feelings.
Marian: I remember learning about Phillis Wheatley through
my school years…it feels like she existed between 7 years old and 12 years
old…but I understand what you mean. I never knew she had a husband until we
read Honoree Fanonne Jeffers essay in The
Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward.
Wendy: I was just awed by Honoree’s writing. I was moved by
the taking away of the child from her mother. How often she comes back to that.
Susannah. P.42 The
last stanza of the poem, Mothering # 2
She took the child into her home,
Fed and bathed her, deciphered
The naps on her head.
Dressed her in strange garments:
Gratitude and slavery.
And so.
I thought that captured the clear dichotomy. The poem on page 53, I thought this was so clever. You can read Phillis’ line, you can also read Susannah’s line. See the letter to John Thornton on p. 126
Fragment#1:
First Draft of an Extant Letter, Phillis Wheatley, Boston, to John Thornton,
London
Dear Sir
You propose my returning to Africa
With Bristol yamma and John Quamine
Who on earth are these negroes and how could
You hand me off as if this was once again an
auction
I thought what Phillis Wheatley wasn’t able to do, Honoree
does for her. P.96-97 a parallel between Susannah Wheatley and Martha Washington, who was also thought to be this
benevolent mistress. Then she was just going to give Ona Judge away to her
relative.
The
Journey of Ona Judge, Enslaved Servant of Martha Washington, Wife Of President George Washington
One night, I heard her, while I was rambling
In the hallway; she revealed that she’d throw
Me to her kin, a gift. It was a blow
To me, a loyal girl, a steady hand
For Mistress when grief would not let her go:
At dinner time, I walked out the front door.
Marian: I wrote to Honoree and asked her a question. I couldn’t
figure out if you were supposed to read P.92 Chorus of the Mothers Griotte
straight down or across. She wrote back
and said either way, she wrote it like this on purpose. The other question I
have (though I didn’t ask the author this one) had to do with the poems about
the immigrant children in detention centers in this modern time.
Sarah: These children weren’t enslaved, but they were just as lost. There's the loss and the fear. I don’t know why she thought it was important to make that link. I don’t know. Newest immigrants get the lowest jobs that don’t pay well at all.
Marsha: I thought the link made sense. It was a child that
was taken away from her mother, lost everything that she knew…amazing that she
even survived the journey. The same of these children in the detention center.
They aren’t treated well. 3 or 4 year-old children, who was giving that child
food what was happening to the young girls who may have had 4 or 5 sanitary
napkins. Who was providing for them? These kids don’t know what’s going to
happen to them. I felt the link between someone being taken from their home and
someone leaving their home, not knowing what’s going to happen to them.
Virginia: I agree with that. I also thought the same thing.
Who was taking care of the little ones?
Marian: I think that poetry is supposed to be heard. Also I
noticed that when Jezrie and Wendy were reading, I realized that there were
words that my eyes had skipped over. When you hear it aloud it enhances the experience.
It really makes you take your hat off to poets.
Barb: the friendship between Phillis Wheatley Peters and Obour Tanner how she became a dear friend, maybe even a soul mate to her. Various poems about the friendship. Deprived of everything she had ever known. What a beacon to have a friendship that she managed to maintain over time. I really appreciate the way Honoree’s honors that friendship
p.77
Lost Letter #7: Phillis Wheatley, Boston, to Obour Tanner, Newport
[dark coming over the
water I was naked
but
unaware of shame my mistress taught me
that
God hates a bare body especially a black one]
[you have my yaay’s
face I lie and say
I cannot
remember her but sister
I do I
do know my name]
Marsha: You have my
Yaay’s face. Do we know Phillis’s name.?
Patty: Another example of a different name is on page 93 in
the poem called Isabell
And then, Isabell put the baby
To her breast and sang,
Your
name is William here,
But Mother
calls you
Something
else
Something
old in secret.
Marian: when you read Before the Mayflower Lerone
Bennett mentioned Isabel and her husband.
Laura: I absolutely love poetry…it’s so mysterious…it’s
feelings woven into the lines. Had to do with the migrant children. A mothering
gesture.p.41 The youngest children and the longing also reminded me of the book
Washington Black. His connection with the white scientist. The longing
and the vulnerability of the young child. The poems with the cross-outs
reminded me of The Poet X how she would write the poem on one page and
what she really wanted to say on the opposite page. There’s an incredible photo
of the author on the back of this book. It’s mystical.
Sarah: I too was not a poetry fan. But I found that in
reading this in the way that each poem/story the messages being told from different people’s perspective. When I told a friend of mine, he told me that
he loved Phillis Wheatley in high school and loved her work. He found a picture
of a statue of PW online and compared it to a picture of Amanda Gorman on the
cover of Time magazine.
Carla: I’m not a poetry person. I can read Maya Angelou but
I could not get into this. She never appealed to me: Phillis Wheatley. It’s
very hard. I need to hear it, but for me to read it on my own is very
difficult.
Marsha: Amanda Gorman book was coming out. It was real to
me when she recited it. Maya Angelou’s poetry was really straightforward. Not with
a whole lot of hidden imagery.
Robin: like Marsha I’m kind of a science person. I’m trying
to figure out what poetry means. …incredible work I think like Judy when
several of you were reading the poems I learned a little more.
Jezrie: from Homegoing
or the crossing over of Goonay lately known as Phillis Peters
The journey is over
But I can –shall- answer:
Yes, even here.
Even in this small, cluttered room
Eve there-on that long-ago ship,
The planks slick with mourning-
Before my name was changed,
And I awoke on this side of water
Wake up, Yaay.
Come to the doorway
And call a prayer
To me.
It sounds so beautiful out loud. Now that I read it out
loud I miss her.
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