16 Comments

I love this and learned as I read. Definitely improved my schema reading about Anne. Thank you, Mariella.

Expand full comment

Thank you so much for reading! I’m glad you liked it! 🤍

Expand full comment

A wonderful tribute to our first poet—too bad there are no portraits of her.

Expand full comment

Yeah I was sad I couldn’t even really find a sketch. But it did give me the opportunity to look at some beautiful artwork!

Expand full comment

what a story and that's real history right there!

Expand full comment

Thank you for reading!

Expand full comment

wow, learned something today!

Expand full comment

I’m so glad! She was an impressive woman 🤍

Expand full comment

I learned so much! Thank you. Our family migrated to America in the 1620's. Our first family member born here in 1627.

Expand full comment

That’s so cool! Where did they come from?

Expand full comment

England :) But before that divers places, France, Ireland, Norway.

Expand full comment

I grew up reading Bradstreet's poetry and didn't know her poetry was so revolutionary for the New World, or that she's considered to be America's first poet. So cool! Thank you so much for telling such a beautiful story, and for giving us insight into what she struggled with. It is sad women still struggle with these very same things today. Her words bring great comfort <3

Expand full comment

Thank you for the comment, and I’m so glad that you enjoyed it! 🤍

Expand full comment

Very cool. Bradstreet was such a favorite of my grandmother’s, I remember her telling me all about Puritanical predestination and how it must have led to anxiety. I wasn’t allowed to read the book alone, she said there were “husband and wife” poems not for little girls, but she let me read certain ones to her. Lovely memories. Great Uncle Walt, with his gravely basso voice and thick Maine accent, sometimes read them to her, too, if a book was near to hand. If you can picture, take out all the R’s and replace them with “ah.” I guess that’s the nice thing about being eidetic, I can hear every syllable today.

Expand full comment

Interesting post. For some contemporary unpublished verse, including one by Thomas Tilham who arrived eight years after Bradstreet, see

https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44807089.pdf

Expand full comment

Well written and really interesting. I have a deep admiration for writers that didn't have access to the technology we have today and still wrote great things!

Expand full comment