A response to: "The Author to Her Book" by Anne Bradstreet

A response to: "The Author to Her Book"

I actually love this poem. I've read it before and I love that sense of familiarity you get when you pick something up and realize you've seen it before. Anyways I think her metaphor is incredibly strong. She compares her book, or any piece of writing really, to a child. Unfortunately, the relationship the author has with her book is not a loving and nurturing one, but rather filled with disappointment and unreached expectations. She refers to her writing as her "ill-formed offspring" and her "rambling brat." Obviously she is not proud of her works. All she is able to see are flaws and imperfections. Because it is something that she created, I don't think it will ever be good enough. She explains that her friends took her writing prematurely and got it published, which only resulted in embarassment and disatisfaction. Every time she looked at the book (her so called child) after that, she was ashamed to be associated with it. I think that actually happens a lot with parents and children. Parents will sometimes set unreasonable expectations for their kids, and then reprimand and punish them when they are unable to live up to them. It's hard because parents are always associated with their child. Every decision that is made, action that is taken, word that is spoken by the child will always be related back to their parents. Often times parents are blamed for the mistakes of their offspring because "they did not practice good parenting". When Bradstreet talks about her book she is merciless. She is harder on herself because, as human beings, that's what we do. In my opinion, no matter how much time she had to edit, change, manipulate her writing into whatever she wanted it to be, it never would have been ready to "send...out of door."