Tracing the Tradition of the "Wheatley Poem": 1773, 1973, 2023, and Beyond.

The article critiques the poems of eighteenth-century African American woman poet Phillis Wheatley. It notes that Wheatley has left an indelible impress on African American poetry, as well as substantive traces in African American poetry insofar as she serves as a recurring subject provoking others' meditations and homages. It states that the earliest Wheatley poems operated only partly from an impulse purely to vaunt Wheatley and often also capitalized on the utility of coopting her legacy.