The Author to Her Book by Anne Bradstreet

In the first few lines of this poem, we find how she views her poems. “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain.” (158) This shows us that she views her poetry as her children. She has created them with her mind. Then they were taken from her and were allowed to be viewed by the public as we see in the third and fourth lines. “Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, who thee abroad, exposed to public view.” (158) She recognizes that they were trying to do a good thing by publishing her poems but she views doing it without her consent is “less wise than true” meaning that their intentions were good though she would not have wanted her works published like they were.

Lines five and six: “Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).” (158) Sh

Lines nineteen and twenty: “In this array ‘mongst vulgers may’st thou roam. In critics hands beware thou dost not come.” (158) It’s almost as if she is giving her child advice, telling it to stay among the readers who are insensitive and ignorant and stay away from the critics. Bradstreet knew that her work was straight-forward unlike the writing style of that day and would not be taken seriously among professional writers and literary artists.

Lines eleven through eighteen: “Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw. I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But no homespun cloth I’ th’ house I find.” (158) Though her first reaction was to cast it away because of the shame and embarrassment it causes her, she feels a sense of motherhood to her poems. Thus, she feels the need to correct the mistakes and to improve the “irksome” poems. She makes a reference to washing the face, as if washing the dirty face of a child. As she tried to rewrite some of the lines and improve on her work, she found that it only caused more problems. She worked on the rhythm by added a few words to make it flow better, but she s

Some topics in this essay:
Author Book, Ann Bradstreet, correct mistakes, ann bradstreet,