America

The form of Wheatley’s poem draws on a model quite familiar to the educated white population in both Boston and London. “America” is executed in carefully measured heroic couplets, two lines of 10 beats each, with five units of unstressed and stressed beats known as iambic pentameter. The heroic couplet can be traced back to classical epics, thus creating an association between the form and serious (or, occasionally, mock-serious) themes. The British Neo-Classical poets whom Wheatley read and greatly admired often used the heroic couplet as their foundational form.

In using heroic couplets and adhering to popular metrical conventions of the time, Wheatley presents America’s rise and its struggle against Britain as something worthy of epic, suggesting that America may have both a just cause and a heroic destiny. In terms of her own poetic reputation, employing these forms with confidence also bolstered her own literary credentials, allowing her to display her own erudition while announcing herself as a poet worthy of serious consideration by her peers.

To illustrate the tense dynamics between England and its American colonies, the poem uses personification. The speaker transforms England and America into a