*Anne Bradstreet Response and Biography summary*

Virginia common wealth university, 9/12/08, Anne Bradstreet, http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bradstreet/bradbio.htm


Response
Anne Bradstreet was an exceptional poet. Speaking from a poet’s point of view, she had great syntax and diction throughout her poems. This is an excellent trait to have seeing that poems come from your interpretation of words. In the poem, The Author to Her Book, she used a technique of using syntax to get you to almost visualize what she is saying. First, there is something special just behind the title. She is giving her life story in the poem and the title ties it all together. It’s almost, in a way, saying she is her book. It’s as if she is saying her book is made up of her thoughts, feelings, life’s goals and accomplishments etc. Her unique style of writing goes far beyond just rhyming, she gets really deep in her choice of words and sentence structures. One line says, “thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain”, and that alone leaves room for meaning to be deferred. She almost in a way want her audience to think of what exactly it is she is trying to say with her difference in word choice. This shows her unique use of imagery that helps the audience almost feel her emotion. In the lines, “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw”, she was really connecting with the audience. Many girls can relate to this line and just by those words alone. All girls go through that moment of adolescence when they constantly see flaws, yet in these lines it’s as if she is saying she went through the same things. Her choice of words gave even more meaning to the emotion she wanted you to feel. Girls would be able to breathe a sigh of relief for there flaw and just except themselves and stop trying to change. Telling her life story gave way for the audience to picture themselves living her words. It’s as if you can picture yourself being the girl she is recalling in the poem and actually feel for her pain. Another interesting poem of hers was entitled, To My Dear and Loving Husband. This poem was rare since many people in her time did not write this way. Similar to the first poem, she kept with her unique since of syntax and diction that helped give a visual to the audience while reading. She says “ I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold” she almost sets you up to paint the picture of a mine of gold and take in mind that her love is more valuable than all of the gold there. The picture that is painted is so deep and meaningful and you actually can say that she loved her husband dearly. In this poem, she also established logos throughout her entire poem being that the purpose was in the title. Her purpose was to tell of why she loved her husband so much. The line that stuck out the most for me was the first one. She says, “If ever two were one, then surely we”. This is a powerful line. Her word choice paints the picture where you are sitting imagining the situation and as she end with “we”, it gives all the meaning. Instead of her just saying we are one, she said it in a way poets and her audience, of course, would be left amazed. Also the line “Then while we live, in love lets so persevere that when we live no more, we may live ever” shows her wanting eternal love. Instead of just saying I want our love to last forever, again she wants to paint the picture for her audience. She is trying to let her audience know that she wants to reach all time high with love for her husband that when they die, it would be so memorable almost as if they broke a record of some sort. In a way it’s as if she wants her audience to be in awe of her husband. She wants this to to leave a memory behind for people to see just how much love they had for each other. By reading both these poems, I can tell her main focus is on imagery, syntax, and diction since all her poems styles are unique in there own way due to simple things like words.


Summary

Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612. On her journey to the new world with her father, she then met Simon Bradstreet, childhood sweetheart, and got married. He was 25 and she was 16 at the time. She was a very smart woman, which was rare during this time. She was tutored at a young age. Even when she had gotten older, she never stopped reading about history, science and literature. She also was a poet growing up. She wrote several pieces about her family and life. Her husband and father both was governors of Massachusetts yet she still was suppose to keep her place in society. Seeing that she had to keep her place in society, she was known due to her poetry. She moved many times during her stay in the new world, often near the frontier. The only way to recall her childhood in Boston was due to her writings of it. She also was a loving person. In her poems, she always wrote of her love for her husband, mother, father, and those whom were special to her. She also was a puritan who did love her religion yet did do things she was not suppose to. However she stayed true to what was right and wrong.