Anne Bradstreet Poetry

Anne Bradstreet’s Poetry Anne Bradstreet was the Danica Patrick of poetry in the mid 1600’s, except she went unknown. She drove into the male-dominant field of poetry. In her time it was frowned upon for women to race in such an intellectual track. Bradstreet does not let the wall between the drivers and the spectators stop her, she pulls right up to the starting line with them. In fact, she uses this barrier of sexes to fuel her ideas. Anne Bradstreet writes using many different forms of figurative language. She does an impeccable job and interacting with the readers emotions. One way she does this is through her diction. For example, in To My Dear and Loving Husband she writes “If ever man we loved by wife, then thee.” The carefully chosen word placement of the line adds more passion to the word “loved” and portrays how much love she has for her husband. Also, the word “ever” demonstrates a puritan belief that a man and woman bonded by marriage should be married to the death.
She also uses many metaphors to making comparisons for the reader. In her poem The Author to Her Book she writes “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.” She compares her book of poems to child; she is a mother to the book.
The tone of her writing changes from poem to poem. Bradstreet uses pathos and the tone of love to portray her emotion in this line is from To My Dear and Loving Husband: “Then while we live in love let’s persevere That when we live no more, we may live forever.” Bradstreets presents her ethos in a very unusual way. She almost degrades herself as a writer in her poems. In the Prologue she writes “For my mean Pen are too superior things.” At the time she kept her works private and felt they would never be published and therefore reduces the credibility for herself as a female poet.