What's your literary canon?
Who pops into your head when you think of poets and authors? Does it show bias? Are you OK with that? Bias isn't always about ignorance; it can be about contentment too.
Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire, To aid thy pencil and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!
-"To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works" by Phillis Wheatley
Who pops into your head when you think of poets?
Terrance Hayes, Kim Addonizio, Kaveh Akbar, Emily Dickinson, Charles Bukowski.
Who pops into your head when you think of authors?
Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Marilynne Robinson.
The latter list worries me – mostly men, white men, and a particular type of man, a type I hate to love, a type I have emulated in various periods of my life in various different ways (not just in writing). There are women authors I love, and yet, I struggle to remember their names.
That this bias exists in me is irritating, very nearly infuriating.
Doesn’t this sterling passage show favor for the same old, very specifically mono-color literary canon?
This is part of the 255 Questions project. Every week I explore, research, and contemplate one question from the poet Terrance Hayes work – the lecture "Questions for Reflection on a Century of Poetry” and his book WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE – reflecting on a century of American poetry.
Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.
-"On Imagination" by Phillis Wheatley
Hayes’ question recalls the Marilynne Robinson quote about her admiration for the 19th century American writers – Dickinson, Whitman, Thoreau, Poe, Melville, Emerson. As a Black man, it must be obvious – in that it’s likely an immediate and unconscious fire of a synapse or flutter of the heart – to Hayes that all these writers are white.
Completely mono-color, almost completely male. If I were Robinson, that list would worry me.
It’s not a judgement.
It’s a contemplation.
Bias is sneaky. It’s not always ignorance; it can be contentment, satisfaction, comfort.
Who has not been so captivated by a poem or a book that you wonder whether anyone else can say something as true? And when you are ready to read again, you might look for something similar, and in that skin color is a way in which we lump artists together, you could find yourself reading into an echo chamber.
I have. Can’t you tell by my list of authors up there? Robinson appears only because hers — “Gilead” — was the last book I read, and I only read that because I’m answering these questions from Hayes.
There are hundreds, probably thousands of American writers from the 19th century that were (still are) largely ignored. Knowing that slavery and racism was very much alive then (still is), people of color probably got ignored on the basis of that alone. And so, I cannot believe that writers of color rigorous in their examination of language and consciousness did not exist. They too were “bending form to their purposes, ransacking ordinary speech and common experience, rummaging through the exotic and recondite, setting promethean doubts to hymn tunes, refining popular magazine tales into arabesques, pondering bean fields, celebrating the float and odor of hair.”
Again, this is not a judgement of Robinson as much as it’s an acknowledgment of Hayes’ acknowledgment of writers who have not gotten their due credit.
So yes, this passage, those writers (on her list and mine) are sterling, but I would feel slightly irresponsible not to be aware of and then very specifically endeavor to counter that bias. And that takes considerable, concerted effort.
'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: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
-"On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley
This is a particularly interesting poem to highlight the considerable, concerted effort it takes to counter bias and uncover the complexity of truth.
Initially, I was using this as a way to display that oppression can turn to self-loathing, that you can end up perpetuating the bias against you. My list of authors above surely betrays that I’ve upheld the misogyny of the patriarchy from time to time.
My initial read of Wheatley’s poem was that while challenging racism, she was also undermining non-Christian Africans, painting them as uneducated and pitiful. Some online analysis of this poem seems to suggest the same, and Black literary scholars have criticized her work as an example of so-called Uncle Tom Syndrome, where subservience and appeasement are used as a coping mechanism to a threat.
But then I was guided to take a closer look at the poem’s use of italics (which are not always presented as the author wrote them in reprints of this poem online). Some research contends Wheatley was using LOADS of irony in this poem, again challenging racism, but also challenging the White narratives of paganism, mercy, and Saviors.
I am no expert. I can’t say for sure what Wheatley was doing in this poem. But if this is irony, it’s use is right up there with Dickinson’s.
And certainly some bit has to be irony, right? She was kidnapped in West Africa, sold into slavery and then brought to America on a slave ship around the age of 7. If there isn’t some tiny inkling of irony in this poem, this has to be one of the greatest examples of finding an oppressor’s silver lining in a oppressively horrific situation.
This is rigor of consciousness and language.
In an effort to counter some of my bias, I’m buying these books that I came across during my research:
Voices Beyond Bondage: An Anthology of Verse by African Americans of the 19th Century
The Sport of the Gods by Paul Laurence Dunbar
“Violets and Other Tales: Exploring Love, Race, and Identity in Early 20th Century America” by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (Paul’s wife)
What do you think?
Have you stumbled upon your own biases? What did you learn? Did you want to counter it?
Who pops into your head when you think of poets? Be honest!
Are there 19th century writers of color that you recommend?