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I don't know how the Puritans used to walk around in these shoes had they never [Statue of liberty talking about puritan shoes]

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heard of sandals hmm Puritan what does that even mean well it

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has the word Pure in it which is probably a good hint you might be

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picturing a typical Puritan right now showing tons of skin drinkin booze [Man drinking booze at a bar]

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wearing like a sailor yeah not quite Puritans were well mannered quiet and

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restrained it's how they thought God wanted them to

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be and it's tough to bare your soul when you can't even bare your ankle but [Puritans in a field]

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Bradstreet saw an opportunity to enlighten the world that revolved around

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her perspective as a chaste Christian woman in the 17th century the Puritans

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were big on keeping emotion bottled up so it was especially brave of Bradstreet [Emotions in bottles in a fridge]

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to buck the norm by waxing poetic about repression and self-denial taking the

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traits that usually prevented Puritans from expressing themselves and turning

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them into the subject of some amazing poetry alright so who was this Anne

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Bradstreet she was born in 1612 died in 1672....60 years did some stuff in between [Anne Bradstreet on a timeline]

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since there were no female authors before her in the Puritan community she

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was something of a trailblazer paving the way for other women and it wasn't

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easy women were not valued beyond their abilities to reproduce and keep a clean [Woman with vomiting babies in a kitchen]

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home which made Anne's writing prowess all the more remarkable because she was the

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first American female poet of note in her era she had no mentors ahead of her, no

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influences she could point to...At least not locally and besides it wasn't nice [Anne points to Sappho]

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to point when she started writing her work wasn't meant to be published you

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can imagine her sitting on a farm bored.. watching goats grow she's looking for

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something to do her writing was just for the fam to sit around and enjoy then

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read to make the kids fall asleep but her collection contemplations

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and several poems compiled a great variety of wit and learning would

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eventually be published both after her death so yes they never had a chance to

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write the film adaptation okay so let's take a gander at one of Anne's poems

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titled before the birth of one of her children it's the old pause-olan til

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you're done digesting it before the birth of one of her....... [Anne's poem appears]

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oh okay well what on earth did all that mean it's like a lot of images are

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thrown down on the page and we're supposed to just to figure out what they [Images appear on a piece of paper]

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mean when they clash so let's start with the basics the key things we're looking

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for in a poem imagery, audience and purpose, rhythm and rhyme, tone and

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meaning we'll start with imagery and see if we can start to piece together this

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poems meaning what sorts of mental images does Bradstreet give us when the

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knot untied that made us one move that's a pretty good one sinks tying the knot [Married couple appear]

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that was sort of 17th century speak for getting married long lay in thine arms also

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paints a picture that is a picture of a dead woman lying in the arms of her

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husband and who with salt tears this last farewell to take is a visually powerful [Tear falls on pile of salt in mans hand]

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ending so yeah she's sad to be gone feels like it maybe took her a long

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sad time to say goodbye so let's just revel in the powerfully depressing

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imagery a woman is married dies in her husband's arms and they cry as they say

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goodbye why is such a big deal don't most people cry when their spouse dies [Man crying]

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well in the era of arranged marriages maybe not we clearly need more input to

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figure out what this poem is actually about...So what about the audience and

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purpose who was the author talking to and why is she bothering to write at all

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well she's addressing the poem to my dear and since she's pregnant it's safe

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to assume she's talking to her husband why is the focus of the entire poem death and

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despair talk doesn't that ruin date night well at least Anne doesn't seem worried

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about anything death related it's not like the works dead, death and grave keep [Death, dead and grave words appear from poem]

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popping up hmm okay so she's writing to her husband because she's concerned

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about death check... major check we're not sure yet who's

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death or why someone might be dying but at least we're on the right track we [Car drives off edge of a cliff]

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hope but we need more clues this is a really vague poem and at this point we

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still have no idea what it's really talking about

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so more clues what's the deal with a rhythm and rhyme of the poem the rhyming

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scheme should be easy to spot and identify each line rhymes with the

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following line end, attend, sweet, meet irrevocable, inevitable note that there

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are 10 syllables per line and the stressed syllables alternate all things

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within this fading world hath end... every other line rhymes and every other

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syllable is stressed isn't there a term for

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that paging Mr. Shakespeare or Alex Trebek [Shakespear and Alex Trebek appear on Jeopardy]

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for 500 what is Iambic pentameter ding-ding-ding each pair of unstressed

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and stressed syllables is afoot and since there are five feet in a line and

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Penta is Greek for five and we're dealing with iambic pentameter pretty

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much everything Bradstreet wrote was an iambic pentameter so there was clearly [Peoples toes wiggle]

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something about counting toes that grabbed her but does that rhythm and

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rhyme scheme help us figure out what the poem is about no really not at all so we

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keep looking next up what's the tone of the poem the tone is joyous obviously

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all that dreary, despairing death talk really lifts the spirit no this poem is [Guys celebrating Christmas]

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not an upper...Anne wants us to feel what she's feeling to gloom and doom

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desperation worry it's almost as if we're sitting down and have a

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heart-to-heart with mom about our future and yeah it might seem like a bummer

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that Bradstreet is trying to bring us down but poetry is all about making us [Anne reciting a poem on stage]

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feel emotion in this case that emotion happens to be of this sad variety...

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well you still don't really know what all this is about why is she down why so

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gloomy and doomy what's making her so miserable a woman's condition with

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limited freedom of the era nah, a classic thinking about the rich having

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it all and before having nothing nope melancholy turn that she can't live [Anne Bradstreets gravestone]

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forever maybe there's clearly more here or we wouldn't

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be reading those lines 300 years later so we search on which brings us to

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meaning finally Bradstreet is referring to herself and her unborn child here we

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know that much from the title was that unborn child the dead she mentioned [Ghost baby appears]

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earlier maybe maybe not we have to dig into the words what did the line to the

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poem tell us what is the knot the ties together the umbilical cord II pretty

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literal and kind of ew.... probably not where the author was going maybe she's

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talking about the bond they have as a mother and daughter... what's our

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evidence? find it in the tone is the vibe of a mother talking to her daughter [Anne with lots of jars of pickles]

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another question why is the knot going to be untied it's awfully early to be

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worried about our kid running away from home so none of this really clicks..The

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answer ie what the poem is really talking about has to be something very

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different and it is at this point given the vastly dark language and imagery and

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tone no big surprise she's talking about death here yes but why why the huge [Death appears with a scythe]

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focus on death at a time of a birth isn't a life about to be brought into

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the world isn't that a happy happy occasion joy love helium filled balloon

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shaped like butts with faces on them well yeah, birth would normally be a

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happy occasion except for one minor detail [Anne laying on a bed and a rat on top of her]

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the Puritans lived in a completely different era when it came to health and

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birth risks oh and there was definitely no Obamacare...

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back then it was exceedingly the common for this to happen when a woman was

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giving birth yeah medicine in those days was [Woman dead after giving birth]

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basically a couple of guys in white hats trying to figure out how to not

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accidentally kill someone with a scalpel or a leech...you got your hair cut and

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your teeth pulled at the same place and babies and mothers dying together was

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sadly common the knot Bradstreet's talking about doesn't have to do with

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her kid it has to do with her husband ie the bonds of marriage yep that's the

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ticket if you go with that concept everything else falls into place if the [Statue of liberty discussing poem]

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woman in this poem does die she's going to long lay in thine arms, she's asking

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hubby to look over their children by saying look to my little babes, which is a [Anne's husband with 3 baby's]

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lot of pressure no wonder men traditionally pass out in a delivery

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room so this poem is basically a written confession of Anne's worries about

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giving birth now it makes a ton of sense and it's a big deal because the belief

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then was that Eve ate the apple and this was just a Gods way but now we have

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a woman who's openly worrying that God's way may not go her way

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almost blasphemy for that era but she wrote it, it stuck and that's why we're

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still reading about it 300 plus years later okay [Before the birth poem stuck on green goo]

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poem number two pause and peruse.....

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so we have a lot less to work with here

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what does this one mean let's go back to our little formula for understanding poems...

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we start with the imagery I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold so what on

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earth does it mean prizing love, mines of gold great images

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the author loves love and we have more images my love is such that rivers

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cannot quench hot dry love...very Romeo so what does this mean see

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rivers and mind with a mystical spin anyone else picturing token glimmer [Man with magnifying glass in the mountains]

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she's clearly obsessed with the concept of love..does she have it, need it, just love

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talking about it no answers yet so we'll press forward next clue audience who is

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the audience here well since the poem is entitled to my

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dear and loving husband we're going to go on a limb and say she's talking to

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her pet ferret yeah no it's not really the ferret it's her husband bonus [Anne with a pet ferret bouncing on a ball]

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points and we call her bluff... moving on so how about rhythm and rhyme

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look like we've got an iambic pentameter fan in our five-fingered hands because

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she's at it again we, thee, man, can, gold, hold.. poem is made of sets of ten

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syllable rhyming couplets why the rhyming couplets well there's structure [Couplets attached to feet]

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Puritans live for structure and one can guess that she took comforted couples

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and couplets... does this help us understand the poem it doesn't get us to

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the meaning no but a rhyme scheme can set a tone or mood depending on the

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rhythm it can make a poem seem frantic or leisurely, discordant or melodic it

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can provide an emotional backdrop to the poems story but we're looking for [People in truck searching for meaning]

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meaning on we go.... so tone the tone is somehow more upbeat than the utter joy

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ride that was the first poem Bradstreet's one mention of death in

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this poem at the very end is used to say that even grim reaper can't keep them

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apart they'll find love together in the afterlife but the rest of the poem [Anne with love hearts singing]

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smacks of someone who's so desperately in love she's singing from the rooftops

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let us count the ways... shout-out to love ask your parents about

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Paul McCartney who wrote silly love songs - let's keep going we need the

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deeper meaning here what is Bradstreet actually saying well that she's in love.... yeah

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that's about it check out the first three lines

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repetition of the words if ever drives home the idea that no two people were

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ever more connected no man was ever more loved by his wife and no wife was ever [Anne holding giant magnet and husband attaches]

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happier... she goes on to say that she values his love more than mines full

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of gold and her love is so unquenchable that an entire river would still leave

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her parched and she says that her husband's love is such an

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incredible gift, there's no way she could repay it so she hopes he's rewarded by

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the heavens for his tenderness in affection [God gives Mr Bradstreet trophy]

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seems like a sneaky way to get out of buying a Valentine's Day present so why

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is it such a big deal for a wife to gush love like this about her hubby

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well in those days pre-arranged marriages were common the norm even the idea of

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human love being so passionate and consuming flew in the faces of vastly

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stayed and disciplined love of God that Puritan's were supposed to be all about

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yes Tres-scandalous to have that human on human love thing going on and the

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fact that it was all pointed out by a woman makes it all the more poignant of [Anne singing at convention]

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a poem that's why we still read it three hundred years after it was written... okay almost

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done; the final poem is verses upon the burning of our house so let's get to it

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here we go pause and read......

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So third poem you're flying solo for this one ace, we won't hold your hand

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like we did with the first two but we'll give you a few hints stick to the [Man in aircraft cockpit]

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structure we've outlined and it will be literary crutches for you to lean on

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remember you're looking for imagery, audience and purpose, rhythm and rhyme,

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tone and meaning the meantime Anne has gotten me in the mood to find love [Statue of liberty holding mobile phone on tinder]

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single, green female seeks 300 foot tall copper companion let's see if I get any

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takers....

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