By Nava Atlas | On December 17, 2018 | Updated March 5, 2026 | Comments (6)
When Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley was published in 1773, it marked several significant milestones. Following is a selection of poems by Phillis Wheatley from this collection.
It was the first book by a slave to be published in the Colonies, and only the third book by a woman in the American colonies to be published.
Phillis (not her original name) was brought to the North America in 1761 as part of the slave trade from Senegal/Gambia. She was purchased from the slave market by John Wheatley of Boston, as a personal servant to his wife, Susanna. She was given the surname of the family, as was customary at the time. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On December 6, 2018 | Updated December 1, 2020 | Comments (0)
This concise analysis of the poetry of Anne Bradstreet is excerpted from Who Lived Here? A Baker’s Dozen of Historic New England Houses and Their Occupants by Marc Antony DeWolfe Howe, an eminent editor and writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) was the first writer in the American colonies to be published.
She rejected the prevailing notions of women’s inferiority. That opened her to criticism, not for her work itself, but that she dared to write and make her work public. It was considered unacceptable for women of her time to have a voice. She not only used hers effectively but pushed back at her critics. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On November 17, 2018 | Updated April 23, 2025 | Comments (0)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875 – 1935; also known as Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson) was a multitalented writer, poet, journalist, and educator. Following is a selection of her later poems, post-dating her early collection Violets and Other Tales (1895).
In her writings, Dunbar-Nelson advocated for women, African Americans, and those of mixed heritage, as she was. Perhaps even more than for her well-regarded poetry, Dunbar-Nelson was known for her short stories and searingly honest essays, in which she expressed the challenges of growing up mixed race in Louisiana. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On November 9, 2018 | Updated February 7, 2025 | Comments (3)
Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902 – 1981) was a multitalented American poet, artist, columnist, educator, and arts administrator associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Following is a selection of poems by Gwendolyn B. Bennett, a true Renaissance woman.
Equally dedicated to visual and literary arts, her first published poem, “Heritage,” was published in the NAACP’s journal, The Crisis, in 1923.
Bennett’s most productive period as a poet was from 1926 and 1927, producing poems that explored themes of racial pride and reflected African motifs. “Fantasy” spoke to the aspirations of African-American women. “Dark Girl” bestowed the nobility African queens upon Black females. Some poems were splendidly romantic, others a celebration of self.
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By Nava Atlas | On October 19, 2018 | Updated May 24, 2019 | Comments (1)
On a recent visit to The Morgan Library in New York City, I spotted a tiny autograph manuscript of the poem “The Night of Storms has Passed” by Emily Brontë, dated June 10, 1837. In tiny, barely legible script on a card perhaps 3 by 4 inches, it was written shortly before her nineteenth birthday.
Remaining unpublished in her lifetime, it has since been included in collected poems by Emily, perhaps the most inscrutable of the Brontë sisters. The text accompanying the poem read as follows: Read More→
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