Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.” This quote defines Anne Bradstreet, for she has proven to be a master of word placement. Her ability to always create the perfect poetic structure was a necessity, not a luxury. Growing up and living as a woman in a man’s world made it impossible for her to show her true feeling on paper, without first disguising them with a contradicting costume. Bradstreet lived in the 1600’s as a Puritan. This was a time when women were not expected to be educated and more importantly, were not tolerated if they spoke against the strong, religious Puritan beliefs. So Anne, a highly educated woman, who did not agree with the Puritan’s beliefs, very carefully rebelled with beautiful poetry and dynamic rhetorical strategies. The two poems that will be discussed here are “To My Dear and Loving Husband” and “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our Houses.” Though these two poems seem to focus on simplicity rather than complexity, there are many underlying meaning and rhetorical strategies that take place,

Anne Bradstreet was given an unbelievable amount of obstacles to overcome if she wanted to be a successful artist. She hurdled, maneuvered, and attacked those obstacles with such unmatched grace. It is unfortunate that she was born into a time period where she had to be so delicate with her choices. Her words were not appreciated in their entirety until long after her death, which brings me to a quote that describes Anne Bradstreet’s accomplishments best, written by Francis Bacon. “We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power…For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles and cities have been decayed and demolished?” Bradstreet’s talent far surpassed the power that ruled during her time. Her words will ring in the hearts of all men and women who read her work forever. The heart of this essay describes how Bradstreet used the rhetorical structure of contradiction to portray her theme. This is very similar to Bradstreet’s life. She is a contradiction of everyone from her time period as a Puritan, yet when I read her work, I think she is my theme. She represents change, and change is definitely something that was needed for us as humans to progress and for women to blossom into equals.

“Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere

That when we live no more, we may live ever.”(Bradstreet 100)

Anne Bradstreet’s talent was truly amazing. I have only described one rhetorical structure that Bradstreet used in the two poems above because it is the most interesting to me. However, Bradstreet used a surprising amount of rhetorical structures throughout both of the poems mentioned previously. Bradstreet used such rhetoric’s as persuasive words through metaphors, tremendous

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