A Response to Phillis Wheatley's "On Imagination"

For all those that feel as Wheatley writes, I urge you to never let "Winter austere forbid[] [you] to aspire;" and nor to let "northern tempests damp the rising fire." (150). To daydream, or to "imagine" as Wheatley conceptualizes it in her poem, can often be harmful to the will. From the beginning of her poem, Wheatley's "imperial queen" has already limited the agency of the human for "silken fetters" are fetters nonetheless and there are appropriate times to be captive and when stuck in iron fetters one should not be captive to anything but a commitment to freedom, liberation and justice. Allowing oneself to be a slave, no matter how gently, to anything else will only prolong the harsh slavery that constitutes the greatest determining factor of one's social reality. The slave's only mission should be to get free, and time spent imagining the beauty of the world that one can not partake in is time wasted, because the only world that is truly beautiful is the one in which we are a valued and equal part.