Anne Bradstreet Poem Response

Anne Bradstreet was a 17th century poet who published many works during that time period. She was an amazing writer and related many of her works to her own personal life. “The Author to Her Book”, for example, spoke figuratively of her poems that were published into a book, which are symbolized as her child. “To My Dear and Loving Husband” also relates to her life. In this poem she was describing how she felt towards her husband. Bradstreet uses many rhetorical devices in her poetry.

“The Author to Her Book” contains a rhetorical trope within the title itself. The title is ironic, because one would expect for the author to her book to be herself. This, however, is not the case. Her poems were taken from her without her permission, and then published in a book for all to see. Thus in fact, the author of Anne Bradstreet’s book was someone other than herself. The poem also contains very many metaphors. “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,” (line 1) compares her roughly drafted poems to a child who is not properly formed. Bradstreet relates the poem to her life by using the metaphor of a child, for she had 8 children of her own.

“Made thee in rags,” (line 5) was another metaphor that Bradstreet used in “The Author to Her Book”. This metaphor compared the words of her poems to rags, because to her, neither is good enough. It wouldn’t be acceptable for her child to be seen in rags, nor is it acceptable for her poems to be seen written the way they are. It can be inferred that when she saw all the faults within her poems that had been shown to everyone, she immediately became embarrassed: “At thy return my blushing was not small” (line 7). “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,” (line 13) gives another example of Bradstreet referring to her poems as her child. She said she “washed her poems’ face” the way a mother would wash the face of her dirty child. She saw even more blemishes after she got finished cleaning up the poems, because Anne Bradstreet was being quite critical of herself. She wanted each poem to be absolutely perfect, and if it wasn’t she wasn’t satisfied with it.

“I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet, yet still thou run’st more hobbling than meet” (lines 15 and 16). Bradstreet continues to give her poems human-like characteristics. She did all she could to try and fix the poems, but there are still flaws in them. She is very unsatisfied with the job she is doing in perfecting the imperfections of her poems. “In better dress to trim thee was my mind, but nought save homespun cloth i’ th’ house I find” (lines 17 and 18). Anne Bradstreet wanted to dress her child, or poem, in better clothes than she did. It would be her aim for her child to look nice, much like it was her aim for her poems to look nice. This is a metaphor because Bradstreet compares the unsatisfying words used within her poems to homespun cloth. It was all she could find, although she wanted to make the words better. Another rhetorical element Bradstreet used was similes. “I cast thee by as one unfit for light,” (line 9) Bradstreet used “as” to compare her published poems to something so terrible that it isn’t fit to be seen in the light. This means that Bradstreet didn’t want the poems to be seen by anyone.

Rhetorical tropes are also used in another one of Anne Bradstreet’s poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband”. “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold or all the riches that the East doth hold” (lines 5 and 6) is a metaphor. Bradstreet compares her husband’s love to gold and riches. In comparing his love to these things, Bradstreet gives the idea that his love is worth very much to her, like gold and riches are worth a lot to other people.

All in all, Anne Bradstreet portrays many rhetorical elements in her poetry. In her poems “The Author to Her Book” and “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, she mainly shows forms of comparisons of one thing to another.