The Author to Her Book

The Author to Her Book by Anne Bradstreet

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth did'st 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 the 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,

Thy visage was so irksome in my sight;

Yet being mine own, at length affection would

Thy blemishes amend, of 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 then is meet;

In better dress to trim thee was my mind,

But nought save homespun cloth in the house I find.

In this array, 'mongst Vulgars may'st thou roam;

In critics' hands, beware thou dost not come;

And take thy way where yet thou art not known,

If for thy Father asked, say, thou had'st none;

And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,

Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

One thing that I liked about this poem was how she described her poem and how she basically told a story through the poem. She thought her book was very bad, and she tried to correct things, but the more she corrected the more flaws she saw in her writing.

There wasn't anything in the poem that I didn't really enjoy. I liked pretty much everything about this poem, and also the way the author used her metaphors wisely

One thing that confused me about this poem was the use of older words. The author of this poem was alive in the 17th Century, so the language is a lot different from today, and this

confused me a little bit.

The main literary device used in this poem is the use of metaphors. One of the metaphors that I really liked, and thought was pretty neat how she used it was, " washed thy face, but more defects I saw, and rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw." This was very interesting to me and I really liked it because the more and more the author corrected things, the more flaws she saw in her writing. The way she used this metaphor was very smart.