Anne Bradstreet: Relationship Between Creator And Creation

The relationship between a creator and creation is often complex involving affection and criticism. Anne Bradstreet’s poem demonstrates the intense emotions of how an author embraces, rejects, mends and ultimately releases a book to the public. The controlling metaphor in the poem allows for the complex attitude to be understood through a comparison between an author, a mother, and a book, her child. Bradstreet established the comparison of a mother to a child at the beginning of the poem when she mentions her ‘offspring’, meaning her book. The author believes that her book is ‘ill-formed’ and immature and is embarrassed by her work. The author is ashamed because she believes that her book is a reflection of herself, just as children are thought to be a reflection of their parents. The author’s friends ‘snatched’ her book from her and brought it to a publisher without her consent. The act of ‘snatching’ is a negative activity, however, it was done by ‘friends’ who are mainly positive influences in one’s life. This conflicted attitude of positive and negative actions allows for the metaphor of control to be present.

The tone shift marked by ‘yet’ allows the reader to understand how an author begins to mend a book. The comparison of a mother to a child is present because as the author revises her book, a mother would clean up a dirty child, a caring action. However, the author still finds ‘defects’ with her work. The author/mother goes on to stretch the book’s/child’s joints ‘to make thee even feet’, to help the child stabilize, like an author does to create structured, metered prose. The complex perspective of mending, but finding more flaws allows for the metaphor of control to be