Summary

“Declaration” takes the Declaration of Independence and removes words so that the text speaks in the voices of slaves “—taken Captive / on the high Seas / to bear—” (19).

“The Greatest Personal Privation” begins with an epigraph from Mary Jones’s 1849 letter about two of her slaves. The poem, in five numbered sections, uses fragments from the Jones letters to tell the reaction of the slaves to the news of their sale and dispersal. In the final section, italics marks the voices of the slaves themselves: “All of you— / All— / I have no more— / How soon and unexpectedly cut off / Many, many, very many times” (22).

The epigraph to “Unwritten” is an 1829 letter from Mary Jones explaining why it is better for a slave to remain enslaved in his “present degraded state” (23). The poem flips this argument, using words from Mary’s letter to...