Here in the USA, April is National Poetry Month. (Yes, among all the other months it is. See here for a bunch of others — scroll down the page a ways. Frog Month! Straw Hats Month! National DNA & Genomics & Stem Cell Education & Awareness Month! (The posters for that last one are about eight feet wide but only a foot high.)) Every day during this time, the normally weekly newsletter of the Poetry Daily site will feature a favorite poem selected and commented on by an active poet. Yesterday, Julie Sheehan chose the following, from Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672):
The Author to Her Book
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight;
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 nought save homespun cloth i’ th’ house I find.
In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.
In critic’s hands beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known;
If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
I’m curious to hear from RAMH‘s regular crowd of intelligent readers (and from any newcomers, for that matter):
What does this poem say?
Reason I ask is, Ms. Sheehan interpreted it in way I never ever would have come up with on my own. An excerpt:
“The Author to her Book”… has the fresh, direct and tough qualities of private language among familiars. We don’t hear so much as overhear it. Unstintingly, unsentimentally she describes the child: “ill-formed,” “in rags, halting,” “rambling brat,” “unfit for light.” The language is brutal, a brutality necessary to control the anguish of the mother, who knows her darling goes into a world as harsh as the one it leaves. At the matter-of-fact acknowledgment, “Yet being mine own, at length affection would / Thy blemishes amend, if so I could,” the poem gets down to the business of mothering. The speaker administers a practiced, vigorous spit shine of the kind that only mothers can give and only their children can endure. But by the end, the mother’s fear for her child is palpable. She is piling on the advice. The final couplet turns its attention on the “poor” mother whose financial circumstances are so harsh they “caused her thus to send thee out of door.” It’s all the more tender for the absence of self-pity, except for that “alas” in the penultimate line.
…She is relinquishing her poems out of love for them, just as a parent relinquishes her child to “take thy way where yet thou art not known,” but she’s hardly romanticizing that process. So we start the poem thinking the poet is abject (“my feeble brain”), but we end with tremendous respect for her strength.
(I can’t find the full commentary online, but that’s pretty much the part which confused and/or sobered me.)
Since first reading this, I’ve wondered if I’d been wrong about it all along. (And yes, I’ll let you know what that interpretation is/was, once I’ve heard from somebody else on the subject.)
By the way, Julie Sheehan is the author of — among other collections — Bar Book: Poems and Otherwise. For a certain sort of reader, that table of contents must be among the most charming imaginable.
