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Authors: Charlotte Gordon
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exhilarating recital of the monarchy’s sins. Though it seemed aimed at a larger audience than any of her previous poems, Anne did not know how it would be received by others. No other New Englander, male or female, had written such political verse about the civil war. Not only had she trespassed into male territory with this kind of political poetry, but she also condemned the king. When at last she copied it out onto paper and sent “A Dialogue between Old England and New” to her father and Ward, she waited with trepidation to hear what they thought.
Fortunately for Anne, there is no record of either man criticizing her ambition; instead both appear to have been thrilled. “A Dialogue” articulated important ideals that were close to the hearts of New England leaders. Later Ward would gloat that she had surpassed all other writers, including men, declaring, “Let men look to’t, lest women wear the spurs.” 29
With the approval of these two important mentors, Anne’s confidence could only soar. While she loved her husband, it was Ward’s and Dudley’s opinions that mattered most when it came to her work. 30 And she had an agenda now. Anne wanted to write in the pithy, “plaine” voice of her new home, and she wanted to add her opinions to the ongoing political debate. In other words, with “A Dialogue” she announced her intention to be a sort of pundit, a public commentator; she was intent on joining the larger world of debate and ideas, one traditionally closed to women.
To do this she would have to invent a simpler, pared-down aesthetic to match the purity of her religion and the newly settled land. This technique would take her many years to develop, but she had come to a turning point. No longer did she want to pull out all the stops and splash out the sort of froth that she had experimented with in her elegies to Sidney and Du Bartas. Her life in Ipswich may have been challenging, but it had offered her a path toward redemption. She was not the miserably uncertain girl she had been back in England and on the
Arbella.
Instead, she was beginning to believe that she did indeed possess the God-given “vocation” to shout out the words of the New Jerusalem.
Chapter Fifteen
Now Sister, Pray Proceed
To add to all I’ve said was my intent,
But dare not go beyond my element.
— ANNE BRADSTREET, “Air”
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN OLD ENGLAND AND NEW” was the first American poem to wave the New England flag. Anne’s claim that she and her family and friends should be admired by those they had left behind was made even more audacious by the fact that she was also writing in a new “Puritan” style of verse, at least whenever New England spoke. This was not the poetry of the last century, with its ponderous, old-fashioned solemnities. Nor was it like the verse of the previous generation, the English Elizabethans, whom Anne had admired when she was younger. She had flung past the elegant phrases and the complicated wit of her first poems, brandishing a biting poetic sword and inventing a “New England” who spoke in a frank, “plaine” voice that flew in the face of good manners.
At first glance, this change in style was not readily apparent. New England’s lines still rhymed like those of her mother. The poem relied on wit and allusion. But New England’s stanzas were briefer, more direct, and less flowery than anything Anne had written before. New England used brutal examples to make her points and often interrupted her mother, so that some of her lines were shorter metrically than others. This technique created a poem that at times seemed to mimic the breaks and rush of spoken language and thus seemed more choppy than ordinary verse of the period. Where were the carefully rounded turns of phrase that sounded “poetic”? Where were the beautiful images from Greek mythology? What kind of verse was this?
Sadly, Anne’s depiction of England as an ailing, weakened mother foretold a tragedy in her
Fortunately for Anne, there is no record of either man criticizing her ambition; instead both appear to have been thrilled. “A Dialogue” articulated important ideals that were close to the hearts of New England leaders. Later Ward would gloat that she had surpassed all other writers, including men, declaring, “Let men look to’t, lest women wear the spurs.” 29
With the approval of these two important mentors, Anne’s confidence could only soar. While she loved her husband, it was Ward’s and Dudley’s opinions that mattered most when it came to her work. 30 And she had an agenda now. Anne wanted to write in the pithy, “plaine” voice of her new home, and she wanted to add her opinions to the ongoing political debate. In other words, with “A Dialogue” she announced her intention to be a sort of pundit, a public commentator; she was intent on joining the larger world of debate and ideas, one traditionally closed to women.
To do this she would have to invent a simpler, pared-down aesthetic to match the purity of her religion and the newly settled land. This technique would take her many years to develop, but she had come to a turning point. No longer did she want to pull out all the stops and splash out the sort of froth that she had experimented with in her elegies to Sidney and Du Bartas. Her life in Ipswich may have been challenging, but it had offered her a path toward redemption. She was not the miserably uncertain girl she had been back in England and on the
Arbella.
Instead, she was beginning to believe that she did indeed possess the God-given “vocation” to shout out the words of the New Jerusalem.
Chapter Fifteen
Now Sister, Pray Proceed
To add to all I’ve said was my intent,
But dare not go beyond my element.
— ANNE BRADSTREET, “Air”
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN OLD ENGLAND AND NEW” was the first American poem to wave the New England flag. Anne’s claim that she and her family and friends should be admired by those they had left behind was made even more audacious by the fact that she was also writing in a new “Puritan” style of verse, at least whenever New England spoke. This was not the poetry of the last century, with its ponderous, old-fashioned solemnities. Nor was it like the verse of the previous generation, the English Elizabethans, whom Anne had admired when she was younger. She had flung past the elegant phrases and the complicated wit of her first poems, brandishing a biting poetic sword and inventing a “New England” who spoke in a frank, “plaine” voice that flew in the face of good manners.
At first glance, this change in style was not readily apparent. New England’s lines still rhymed like those of her mother. The poem relied on wit and allusion. But New England’s stanzas were briefer, more direct, and less flowery than anything Anne had written before. New England used brutal examples to make her points and often interrupted her mother, so that some of her lines were shorter metrically than others. This technique created a poem that at times seemed to mimic the breaks and rush of spoken language and thus seemed more choppy than ordinary verse of the period. Where were the carefully rounded turns of phrase that sounded “poetic”? Where were the beautiful images from Greek mythology? What kind of verse was this?
Sadly, Anne’s depiction of England as an ailing, weakened mother foretold a tragedy in her
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