Poetry for All Transcript for Episode 9: Anne Bradstreet, ÒIn Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth BradstreetÓÊ Abram: Hello, IÕm Abram Van Engen, an English Professor at Washington University in St. Louis.Ê Joanne: And IÕm Joanne Diaz, a poet and English Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.Ê Abram: And this is Poetry for All.Ê Joanne: This podcast is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it. Abram:Ê In this podcast, weÕll read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.ÊÊ Joanne: Today we thought weÕd talk about an elegy by Anne Bradstreet called ÒIn Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet.Ó Shall I read this poem, Abram? Abram: Yes, please.Ê Joanne: Okay. In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content, Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye, Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent, Then ta'en away unto eternity. Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate, Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate; Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state. By nature trees do rot when they are grown. And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall, And corn and grass are in their season mown, And time brings down what is both strong and tall. But plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown, to have so short a date, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate. Abram: Thank you for that. So to get into this elegy I think itÕs important to know, first of all, who Anne Bradstreet is. She was a Puritan poet right in the 1600s in New England, she was the first woman from British North America to publish a book of poetry in 1650 called ÒThe Tenth Muse.Ó And when we think of a Puritan writing poetry, I think one of the things thatÕs important to understand is that so much of their religious life was, in fact, struggle. It was a struggle with themselves and their own sins, but also a struggle with how to love a God that seems so often incomprehensible to them. And I think a lot of that is going on in this poem where sheÕs trying to figure out how to love, how to find comfort in, how to find consolation in a God that is in fact seeming to do some quite terrible things like take a grandchild away whoÕs just been born. So when you think about this poem, we mentioned that itÕs an elegy up front, what is an elegy and what is that tradition?Ê Joanne: So thatÕs a really broad tradition that goes from ancient Greece to the present. And traditionally, it comes in many forms. Right now we have it in a sonnet form from Anne Bradstreet, but it doesnÕt have to be in a sonnet form. It could be in free verse, it could be a long narrative poem, but generally itÕs a poem of deep grief and loss. Typically itÕs a loss of a person through death, but it could be the loss of a place or a feeling, too. It can encompass a lot of different experiences. But typically it is deep grief over the death of another person. Quite often, elegies speak to the dead, try to bring back the presence of the dead. Quite often, elegies span in their emotional range from rage and denial to ultimately understanding of the profundity of death and consolation. There are many formal and rhetorical elements that we can talk about with the elegy, but generally speaking, thatÕs what we mean when we say Òelegy.Ó Abram: ThatÕs great, yeah. And just to build on that, to think about what it is in this poem that brings the force of mourning, of weeping to the front, I think thereÕs two aspects to think about with this elegy: One, first, is the idea of repetition. I think repetition is really powerful in this poem. ThereÕs three farewells that begin this poem: ÒFarewell dear babe,Ó ÒFarewell sweet babe,Ó and ÒFarewell fair flower.Ó You say ÒfarewellÓ three times when itÕs really hard to say Òfarewell.ÓÊ Joanne: Mmmm. Abram: When itÕs very difficult to get past that moment of saying Òfarewell.Ó So repetition is never just the repeating of a single word again. To say the same word again is to say something new each time, using the same word. And the depth of the emotion becomes deeper and deeper with each repetition here. But even more so, I think one of the things you could do with this poem, one thing to think about with poetry is to erase everything but one thing to look for. And in this poem, you could do that with Ònow,Ó and verbs, adjectives and so on. If you erase everything except the nouns in this poem, what you get are very seemingly lovely nouns: Òbabe,Ó Òheart,Ó Òcontent,Ó Òpleasure,Ó Òeye,Ó Òflower,Ó Òspace,Ó Òdays,Ó Ònature,Ó Òtrees,Ó Òplums,Ó Òapples,Ó Òcorn,Ó Ògrass,Ó et cetera. ItÕs all lovely things, it seems like it should be a poem about lovely things. But when you look at just the verbs in this poem, theyÕre all quite terrible: Òwas lent,Ó Òtaken,Ó Òshould bewail,Ó Òsigh,Ó Òsettled,Ó Òrot,Ó Òfall,Ó Òmoan.Ó And so a lot of the tension of the poem is that these are not the kinds of verbs that should go with those kinds of nouns. And the fact of bringing those nouns together with these verbs brings out the sort of emotional power of the mourning thatÕs going on in this poem.Ê Joanne: Yeah.Ê Abram: When you look at the words of this poem, what do you notice about the adjectives that are happening here?Ê Joanne: Right, so quite often we spend a lot of time, when we read poems, we focus a lot on the nouns and the verbs because typically, those are really supercharged parts of speech. You get the agent of action and you get the action itself. So feel like those are really foundational, elemental parts of speech. And then adjectives, you think theyÕre more primarily descriptive, but there are two words in this poem that really turn me on to what sheÕs doing, and thatÕs ÒterminateÓ and Òeradicate.Ó And sheÕs using both of those as adjectives, we would say ÒterminatedÓ or ÒeradicatedÓ in 2020, but sheÕs saying ÒterminateÓ and ÒeradicateÓ as adjectives. Why is that interesting? Because for me, when I read the first stanza, it says ÒBlest babe why should I once bewail thy fate,/Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate;/Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state.Ó Well when I look up ÒterminateÓ in the dictionary and I look up its origins, its etymology, I know that it comes from the Latin Òterminare,Ó to mark the boundaries of, to demarcate, to determine the limits of. And I feel like thatÕs such a powerful word for this poem because she seems to be trying to mark the boundaries of her grief and her loss. And she doesnÕt seem to be able to get a handle on it. SheÕs able to say that word, but the poem doesnÕt seem to suggest that sheÕs resolved her feelings on this, right? Abram: Mmhmm. Joanne: The other word I love is Òeradicate.Ó So, in the second stanza when she says ÒBut plants new set to be eradicate, / And buds new blown, to have so short a date, / Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.Ó As you said, Abram, sure, things grow in the world to their maturity, to their fruition and then they die, but plants that are newly planted to be suddenly eradicated? The word ÒeradicateÓ has in its root ÒradixÓ or Òroot,Ó right, so to eradicate something is to pull or tear it up by the roots. ItÕs a very violent word. And so for a new plant to be eradicated is so anathema to everything she has understood up to this moment. And it lands the poem in a very unsettled, frustrated sort of tone for me and I really like that.Ê Abram: ThatÕs so great, and even thinking of those adjectives, which are happening in different stanzas, it begins to ask us why are there two stanzas even to begin with? It seems like this poem could be complete at Òeverlasting state.Ó That seems like a very orthodox kind of poem. She has come to conclusion that this babe is in heaven, she shouldnÕt wail anymore, all is set, all is fine. And yet the poem goes on, thereÕs a second stanza. So often I ask students to think about what does the second stanza have to do with the first stanza? And at first it seems like sheÕs completely changed the subject. Now sheÕs talking about nature and the way things grow up and grow big, and then she flips it back again on its head, those last three lines saying Òwhy was this fair flower not allowed to grow up?Ó And so one of the ways I think about BradstreetÕs poetry is that itÕs often a poetry about process. SheÕs trying to process something, she is trying to get herself somewhere. And even that line Òwhy should I once bewail thy fateÓ is a line of wailing. SheÕs basically asking herself Òwhy should I wailÓ as she is wailing. Joanne: Mmmm. Abram: And so sheÕs trying to get herself some consolation here. And so often with her poetry, weÕll see it moving past the point of a kind of perfect and orthodox conclusion. It keeps pushing, it keeps asking Òbut why, God, why, God, why is this happening?ÓÊ Joanne: Mmmm. Abram: And thatÕs where the second stanza relates to the first. So you have all these interesting ways that they weave together. ÒFair flowerÓ is a natural image that goes with Òtrees,Ó Òplums,Ó Òapples,Ó Òcorn,Ó and Ògrass,Ó except Òthis fair flower was eradicated.Ó Joanne: Yeah. Abram: And then you have the word Òfate,Ó which gets at the kind of question of this poem: who is in control of this fate? ÒWhy should I once bewail thy fateÓ is in the fifth line of the first stanza, but then it ends by saying Òis by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.Ó And we end on that question of fate. And so thereÕs all these ways in which the stanzas actually weave together.Ê Joanne: ThatÕs helpful to hear you talk about that because weÕve talked about sonnets in other episodes and weÕve talked about the sort of formal constraints of the sonnet and how typically, thereÕs a structure in which thereÕs a turn either between lines 12 and 13 or perhaps between lines 8 and 9, depending on the type of sonnet that it is, and this is the first sonnet that IÕve encountered that looks quite like this where itÕs two separate stanzas of 7 lines each and a very different rhyme scheme. But I like that symmetry because it means that she gets to put just as much time into the reassuring of herself in that second stanza and how incomplete it is as she does with that beautiful farewell in the first stanza.Ê Abram: Mmhmm. And you know, if youÕre tracking individual words and individual rhyme schemes, first of all you have the oddity of A-B, A-B, C-C-C; D-E, D-E, C-C-C. ThatÕs not a usual rhyme scheme for a sonnet. But then thereÕs these internal rhymes as well. And so if you look at the second stanza, this incredible internal rhyme scheme thatÕs based in the long O sound, which we often use for mourning. But if you pull out those words, what she says in that second stanza is Ògroan,Ó ÒmownÓ down, Òblown,Ó Òalone.Ó And with that one simple rhyme following through in the second stanza, she actually tells the whole story, the whole narrative of this poem, which is that a babe was ÒgrownÓ briefly, then ÒmownÓ down too soon, and ÒblownÓ away and she is left Òalone.Ó And so with the sound of mourning sheÕs actually telling the story of this poem again in the second stanza.Ê Joanne: That is such an accomplishment in this poem that not only is she capable of creating this unique rhyme scheme at the ends of the lines, but also within the lines. SheÕs very attentive to sound, itÕs very impressive. So, Abram, after I read this beautiful second stanza, which I feel like I have a grasp of what sheÕs saying, I get to the final line and IÕm not sure what sheÕs saying. Let me try to understand this. ÒBut plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown, to have so short a date, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.Ó IÕm not quite sure I understand what Òis by His hand alone that guides nature and fate,Ó could you help me with that? Abram: ThereÕs two things to notice about that last line of the poem, ÒIs by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.Ó First of all, itÕs too long. So the seventh line and the fourteenth line have twelve syllables in them, which gets again to that point of a process that is never complete and in fact takes so long that it canÕt be fit in. But the other thing that it does is that it does not have the word ÒitÓ in it. ItÕs implied, but itÕs not implied where ÒitÓ ought to go. So thereÕs two ways to think about that: the last line could be implied to read Òit is by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.Ó ThatÕs a kind of declarative statement. Or, it could be Òis it by his hand alone that guides nature and fate?Ó In other words, that last line puts her perfectly poised between a kind of statement and declaration of fate and an open question and doubt and struggle to believe in this God. And thatÕs exactly where the whole poem is. And so by actually taking that one word out and leaving a kind of ungrammatical ending, she leaves the poem where it has been since the beginning, which is perfectly in between faithful love of this God and incomprehensible doubt of a God who would do this.Ê Joanne: Mmmm. With all of that in mind, would you be willing to read this poem again?Ê Abram: Absolutely. In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content, Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye, Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent, Then ta'en away unto eternity. Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate, Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate; Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state. By nature trees do rot when they are grown. And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall, And corn and grass are in their season mown, And time brings down what is both strong and tall. But plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown, to have so short a date, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate. Joanne: Beautiful poem. Thank you so much. We hope that you enjoyed this episode and that you will listen to our others. You can subscribe to this podcast, you can follow us on social media, and you can visit our website for more information about this poem and others by Anne Bradstreet.Ê