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[Kelsey]

Most of the poetry we read is based on personal experience, nature, love, lust and so forth. We don’t read much poetry on someone’s personal life within historical history. Something that is so captaining and makes you questions every word and line. Poetry is made as a maze, you find your own way through it with out any right answer. The only person to know what it truly is about is the writer that’s the suspense within the poem. However every now and then we come across poems that not only are personal and teach us a lesson but also give us an insight on historical context. Whether it is published fitting to a political stance or is published for the people or even both. I read this poem by an author name Philis Wheatly and may I say her work is outstanding. Although we have to understand the era and understand many of the things she has writing about had to be fixed and alter for a political reason her work gives us an insight on her life as a slave.
Being an English major with love for history Philis Wheatly “ On being brought from Africa to America”. Gives me a little taste of both. It gives me an inside on a slave’s life whose owners brought them into religion. “'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too”(lines 1-3). You will notice that this poems structure has rhyming couplets. I believe this poem is extremely powerful to the 18th century literature because it gives us an outlook; a different perspective on slavery and the owners. It shows that although the owners were so cruel that some actually taught there slaves religion and education so that they would understand one another.
This poem is highly recommended to English and history lovers. Philis Wheatly poems are outstanding and every educational to a reader. As a reader from my perspective this poem gives me the right taste of engagement. It brings me into the reading and makes me question a lot of the things I’ve learned over the years. I believe Wheatlys brought up education is shown threw her works. She writes with such passion as you read. And she does not fail to recognize her fellow people who are slaves. She almost gives them a sense of hope. “Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.” (Line 7-8). Her poems in my own opinion as someone who writes her self is definitely a good read to many. I most definitely recommend it teachers who teach both history and English within high schools and to college professors teaching other 18th century works and lastly I recommend it to you; whoever you are reading this post. There’s no doubt in my mind that it will give you a different look on slavery and what has been taught to us throughout the years. I hope you enjoy it!