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Thanks Josh for introducing us to Wheatley.

"Our god forgetting, by our god forgot" has the ring of Shakespearean rhythm to me. But I agree it could also be a line in Hamilton.

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Great point -- and that is just the kind of fusion I mean. Wheatley was steeped in the Bard, as well as the metaphysical poets, but she made those rhythms her own.

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Beautiful.

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Thanks for reading :)

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Josh! First time reader. I’m teaching tenth graders about Wheatley for the first time in a few weeks- your article will be on our curriculum. Thank you for your work! I’ll be subscribing as soon as it’s in the budget :)

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George, this makes me happy. I'd love to hear how the essay plays with your students! If it lands, my earlier post on Anne Bradstreet might be helpful. Deep respect to you from one teacher to another.

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This is superb, Josh. I especially appreciate the insights into Wheatley's double-voicing. I just attended a talk by Dr. Anna Brickhouse (U Virginia) who makes an argument about the US relationship to catastrophe in the world (how we see ourselves as exempt from it and have, in fact, unleashed it on the world since Columbus). She begins with a reading of the double-voicing in opening lines of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in which Diaz suggests that unleashing through lines that destabilize US notions of dominance and control. At any rate, I guess I'm glad you share this work here when it might normally appear in a first-rate academic journal Thank you!

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Ah, thank you Carol! I suppose I have little faith that readings like this would find their way into most academic journals today. Plus, you can't share videos with Cornelius Eady and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in PMLA :)

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