Bradstreet is a poet that I struggle with. While I enjoy her poetry a great deal I tend to find myself overwhelmed if I read more than three or four poems at a time. I can't decide whether it's the content or presentation of her work that I don't connect with on a personal level, but either way I can honestly say that while I do appreciate the cleverness and intellect apparent in her poetry I have never been moved to rush out and buy a volume of Anne Bradstreet poems as I have been after reading other poets.
My struggle with connecting to Bradstreet perhaps lies in the almost paradoxical nature of her poetry. I love how ironically she handles between poet and audience, and in particular the relationship between female poet and audience. She is well aware of the supposed limitations on woman's poetic license, and exploits them masterfully in poems such as The Prologue and The Author to Her Book. In The Prologue she asserts her inability to express her thought in words fitting "to sing of wars, of captains, and of kings," but continuously drops classical allusions that betray her capability in exactly these directions in poems such as In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory and A Dialogue between Old England and New.
She also blurs the lines between the private and public spheres in ways that in poetry and other literature of the period are often surprising. While the majority of her poetry is essentially domestic she often dabbles in the political realm, as well. The poetry she writes to her husband is quite personal, as well as the lines she pens in Before the Birth of Her Children, In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August 1665, Being A Year and a Half Old, and Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666, to name only a few. These poems deal with very domestic concerns -- birth and death both take place in the home, which is essentially the realm of the woman, as opposed to politics and business etc. which take place in the public realm of man. Bradstreet's entrance into this realm at all is commendable, though at times I feel like she'd have liked to stretch her wings a bit more, and wish she might have let loose and fly.
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You make some great observations regarding the paradoxical nature of Bradstreet's poetry, my favorite being "The Prologue" in which, as you said, she makes allusions she says she isn't fit to make. I also appreciate the light you threw on Bradstreet's blurring between public and private spheres. (Which I'm going to call tension.) I agree that she seemed like she wanted to let herself fly and be a publicly successful poet. Society said that doing so was a no-no, and despite her tongue-in-cheek comments to the contrary I think she felt a little bit like it was a no-no, too. God and her family were supposed to be enough for her, and I imagine it bothered her that it wasn't. (I'll have to bug you about this later, because I'm interested to hear what you'd say back :) )
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post!