News at Eleven: After reading the poem, I agreed

with this assessment until I read the opinions of Thomas Jefferson, who thought she was "below the dignity of criticism," Amiri Baraka, who found her "ludicrous," and Seymour Gross, who thought she was a female "Uncle Tom."

"That's harsh," I thought. "Did any of her critics even consider the possibility that this young slave might have been writing from behind the walls of irony? What would the poem look like if I became her third-person narrator with limited omniscience?"

from OfficialWire: Letter From SC: Reading Between Poet Phillis Wheatley's Lines

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