Phillis, Alison Clarke
University of Calgary Press, 2020
In “Chrysalis,” which speaks to the horrific living conditions aboard slave ships, Wheatley speaks of “Horrors that/no child should see. Violations I still cannot speak of.” Later, in “Tempest,” she speaks of how “my gift of writing would/somehow/Help me escape this.” When she was just fourteen, in 1767, Wheatley published a poem in The Newport Mercury about a fierce storm off the coast of Cape Cod. In “Prince,” Clarke imagines that Wheatley would have known that her gift of writing, of making “The Story,” was her “refuge against the storm. Not just a storm at sea, but a storm that conjured up “the ghosts that lurked within, the pain/within, the memories that seeped out, but I had to contain.” In this collection, Clarke gives Phillis Wheatley a voice that sings, in how she gives us a sense of her life before slavery, during, and after.
While she had experienced so many horrors during her time as a slave, and in the crossing from Africa to America, Phillis Wheatley found great comfort in the words she wrote, in the stories she put to paper. In “It Begins,” Clarke takes on Wheatley’s imagined voice, as she does throughout the entire collection, speaking of The Ancestors who will guide Phillis on her journey. She is led by some greater force: “If I can get published,/Slap black print on white,/I will achieve freedom.” Then, in “Voyage,” Phillis speaks about her past: “Why write about a life that was ripped from you? I can’t. I/won’t. I deal, I sleep with enough ghosts hanging about me.I/sleep with too many screams, sounds of cries, hopelessness.” Clarke imagines that Phillis would have had to have compartmentalized that grief, those horrors, in order to move forward. As humans, we do this when we come through very difficult times in our lives. To imagine this compounded by the horrors of slavery, and of having survived that kind of hell and torture, is to begin to know the figure of a woman who must have been so very brave and strong.
As her work gained prominence with important people in America, Phillis Wheatley’s fame as a writer spread. She went across the ocean to visit England. Clarke writes of this visit in “Londinium,” where she records what Phillis might have experienced in great detail. This longer poem stands out in the collection because we get a sense of how torn Phillis is about trying to find a place where she can belong. She was forced to leave her homeland, because of slavery, and now she cannot find an anchoring place. She writes of London: “In Londinium, they/saw me for my gifts, not for the colour of my skin. I was an artist, not a slave. Not Something lesser than. I was a human/being.” Phillis feels there was shift inside her, and says, too “Boston is not home.” Her journey, as a woman and a writer, is fascinatingly reimagined by Clarke.
Structurally, the book is divided into three sections, and you really do—as a reader—get a sense of moving through a life. There is a chronology to be followed, of course, in telling a person’s life story, but Clarke dips back into memory and pulls that thread forward to weave the story of Phillis Wheatley’s life in a vibrant way. In the third part, we walk with Phillis to the end of her life, remembering a husband and children, as well as her trials and tribulations. As she gets closer to her own end, she hears her ancestors calling to her, to return home.
Writing persona poems isn’t a simple thing. I’m always so impressed by poets who can do this well. Clarke does this very, very well. Phillis is an emotional read because it makes you care about this woman, and you want her to succeed and flourish, and she does. It also, though, makes you think about the history of slavery and racism in the world. This is very important scholarship and poetic work.
As you read through the poems, you walk alongside Phillis, and you get a sense of who she was as a person. Phillis steps off the page, and then just really walks into your heart and mind, if you spend time with this book of poems. That, I think, is one of the real gifts of Phillis. You’re gathered into her life, and you feel blessed because of it. That Alison Clarke has done this so very artfully, and with such detailed scholarship and research, is a brilliant thing.
