Life Math
- Marion Bishop, MD, PhD
-
Omaha, Nebraska
mcbishop@unmc.edu
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- PIECE OF MY MIND (YOUNG RK, ED)
When I taught English, my students and I read Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). A Puritan and a mother, she was also America's first published poet. Her syntax and use of unfamiliar allusions sound old-fashioned to our modern ears, and her reliance on Christian faith can prove difficult for secular readers to understand. But I loved teaching Bradstreet. Her poems always proved to be more than they appeared.
In “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” Bradstreet addresses her husband about an upcoming birth: “How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend/How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend” (7-8).1 She counsels him that if she dies in childbirth, he should marry again, but “if thou love thyself, or loved’st me, . . . protect [our children] from stepdame's injury” (23-24).
At first reading, this fear of death-by-childbirth seems overwrought, but read in context of 17th-century realities, Bradstreet's entreaty to her …
