Anne Bradstreet, the American Puritans and their Poetry

Abandon all Hope, ye Sinners.

Never before have I read Anne Bradstreet or the other American Puritans, aside from a few quickly forgotten poems at some point in my education. I've never been interested in any of the poetry by these people and it probably comes down to a few simple facts:

1. I don't believe in a god.
2. I don't like the unadorned.
3. I don't like the manner in which she is attributed with being the first American poet that was published. 
4. The following meme didn't really make me believe that she was praised for her intricate and finely crafted metrical lines. It isn't even divided into the lines of the quatrain that they are taken from (JEEBUS CHRISSY!!!). At least, the "author" kept the capitalization at the start of the lines.

But I'm doing a class on American Poetry and we started the course by looking at several Puritan poems. For some strange reason, I began scanning the poem that we were dealing with (which was "To My Dear and Loving Husband") and it all started to make a bit more sense, than I had ever allowed Puritan poetry to give me.

For those of you who don't know where to find it, I'll present a version of it below:

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we. 

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; 

If ever wife was happy in a man, 

Compare with me ye women if you can. 

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, 

Or all the riches that the East doth hold. 

My love is such that rivers cannot quench, 

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. 

Thy love is such I can no way repay; 

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. 

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more we may live ever.

 The style of the poem is quite unique for a 17th century poem. I'm not talking about the meter although the poem starts with a perfect iambic pentameter. It's rather the manner in which love is described. "Compare with me ye women if you can" is a pretty dramatic stance that is taken by the speaker and the clarity that it presents to me is quite telling as to how I read poetry. Most likely, she is saying that she wants every other woman in the world to compare their love to hers. The line is metrically quite undramatic though, so any thoughts that could lead my interest to the line is thrown away, as it is once again in nice iambic pentameter.

Just below that line, however, we find a major shift in the poem. "I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold," resonates as a wonderful line in a prosodic manner and the spondee in the fourth foot (whole mines) is shown as being extraordinary because of the prosodic pattern of the poem. Bradstreet is highlighting the value of her husband's love simply through mixing up the metrics and, for some strange reason (surprise!!!), the words also make sense in discussing this metaphor. The alliteration in more and mines also give a sense of the importance that can be found in the line. It's exactly this type of discovery in the framework of a poem that makes me like it, even though it might be quite simple in its message. The care taken to place these little nuggets of tradition, makes me feel like a detective and the investigation is filled with thrills.

I would most likely divide the poem into three quatrains and the reason for this arbitrary editing would be that the tone and register of the speaker shifts. The first four lines are mentioning love between man and wife. The next four lines speak of the value of that love. The final four lines are a praise to God and a hope that the speaker and her husband are united again when their lives end.

The poem is quite simple, but the imagery is striking and compelling. It certainly doesn't feel like it's 350 years old, except for the ancient pronunciation of "persever" which is /pɜ:ˈsevɚ/ in IPA. Notice that the stress is on the second syllable. The same pronunciation can be found in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, where the widow says the following in 3.7.37: "Instruct my daughter how she shall persever,". The line is found in section of  blank verse and lends credence to the interpretation that persever and ever rhyme in Bradstreet's poem.

I actually wanted to say something about the other puritans, but I'm not really in the mood for looking at the poems right now and, most likely, Anne Bradstreet is a good representation of what they actually did produce, when it was quite good poetry.