Monday, February 16, 2009

The Author to Her Book

From the assigned Heath readings, I enjoyed the poetry from Anne Bradstreet the most. Easily, my favorite poem is “The Author to Her Book”. I believe the poem to be about a personified work of literature, and from the title the reader can assume the work is a book. The narrator of the poem is the one that creates the piece of literature. The narrator views the literature as a child, shown by the passage “My rambling brat (in print) should mother call” (line 8). As one reads the poem one takes note of the odd relationship between the narrator and the book personified as a child. The passage, “I cast thee by as one unfit for light,/ Thy visage was so irksome in my sight” (lines 9-10) illustrates that the narrator is embarrassed of the book; in fact, the narrator is annoyed by the work and realizes the book is terrible and an embarrassment. The mother of the book tries to edit it but while doing so makes it worse than it started. I feel the poem ends on a rather funny note, that the narrator, or mother, realizes the literature is terrible but sends it off anyway because the narrator needs money. The gender choice of the narrator is also of paramount importance. Conveying the literature as a child and the author as the mother creates an abstract relationship that stronger in the eyes of the reader than a male author and a work of literature. Having a stronger relationship makes the work much more embarrassing.

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