Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672)

This collection is worthwhile, especially, because of the historical poems that Bradstreet manages to intertwine poetic grace with a sense of wonder. There is where the heart of her work, at least to me, lies. The other poems vary in quality, generally diminishing in importance and style towards the latter part of the collection. Nevertheless, it was still worth reading.

3 stars.

The editor gives a moving Introduction: "In 1630, Anne Dudley Bradstreet was a passenger aboard John Winthrop's Arbella as it moved out of Southampton Waters to lead three other ships toward the New World." With her parents and new husband, the 18yr old Anne, her face marked by small-pox, few thought she would survive the perils of the colony. In fact her husband became a magistrate and she gave birth to 8 healthy children, and a book of poetry that was the sensation of its own age and show more ours.

Anne is clearly Unitarian and even atheist in her declamations. Believers will be misled by the fact that she never curses God, not realizing you have to believe in God to curse the pains and His relentless attentions. She frankly confesses no experience, none, with miracles. Her faith is in Hope, in caring, and in recovery, not the abstracts of redemption. She was often ill and expresses it well. And three poems on the death of children, not her own. Each poem is a Unitarian prayer. show less

I love Bradstreet’s religious themes, but also I loved her personal accounts of life. Although her writing was from a comparatively primitive pioneer era, her poems on motherhood and womanhood, on struggling to find balance in life, on developing and sustaining her Christian faith, and on writing still resonate with me in this very different age.

Ironically, the volume of her own poetry that was published in her lifetime (without her permission) was full of poems that I just could not get show more into for boredom (a poem on the four elements, one on the four humors of man, etc.). The poems that most resonated with me, those that I would call “the Best,” were the personal, womanhood-inspired poems, ones that she never intended for publication but that reflect her struggles and worries: poems of the heart. I loved those ones.

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This is a short collection of Bradstreet's poetry. Bradstreet (1612-1672) was an early colonist of New England settling eventually in Ipswich (just north of Salem) when it was still frontier. A volume of her poetry was published in England during her lifetime but her poems were not published in America during her lifetime. I was looking for something in particular as I read through the volume, so it is perhaps unfair of me to comment on the collection as a whole, but despite the sometimes show more thick 'Puritan-speak', there are some real gems here. show less