Skip to main content
Access to this video is a benefit for members through PBS Passport.

Up Next

Six Years Later, Epitaph for a Centaur

Six Years Later, Epitaph for a Centaur

Season 4 Episode 2
25:21
Mushrooms, Weakness and Doubt

Mushrooms, Weakness and Doubt

Season 4 Episode 3
25:21
July in Washington

July in Washington

Season 4 Episode 4
25:21
Hill Country

Hill Country

Season 4 Episode 5
25:21
Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

Season 4 Episode 7
25:21
Poetry in America Season 4

Steps

Season 4 Episode 8
24:42
Episode 5: The Calling

The Calling

Season 4 Episode 5
53:05
When Whales Could Walk

When Whales Could Walk

Season 51 Episode 1
53:31
Back to Show
Poetry in America

Phillis Wheatley: To the University

Season 4 Episode 1

In 1770s Boston, Phillis Wheatley was at the same time enslaved and an international celebrity: a writer who mastered the most persuasive rhetoric of the day to publish enduring arguments about freedom. Inaugural poets Amanda Gorman and Richard Blanco, writer Clint Smith, and scholars Glenda Carpio and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. join host Elisa New to read two of Wheatley’s poems for public occasions.