On Friendship

Phillis Wheatley is known for often using heroic couplets in her poetry. This form involves a series of five pairs of syllables with a pattern of unstressed/stressed per line, known as iambic pentameter, with pairs of end words rhyming with one another, known as rhyming couplets. These couplets are usually self-contained, meaning the thought finishes at the end of the line rather than rolling over to the next line.

This form’s use in English poetry reaches back to the Middle Ages, as seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and it was later associated with the works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, most notably in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. It reached the height of its popularity in the 18th century. Wheatley was exposed to these poets and their forms in her studies at the Wheatley household. Her adoption of the heroic couplet form in her poetry was therefore both a reflection of her sophisticated literary education and the aspirations she had for her own work.

Variations on the form, including enjambment with the rhyming couplets, developed as poets had to adjust the form in order to tell the story they need to tell.