An American Triptych
In her book An American Triptych, Wendy Martin writes about three extraordinary women poets. Martin takes you through the history of the lives of Anne Bradstreet's Puritanism to Emily Dickinson's transdentalism to Adrienne Rich's modern feminism. In this book you will learn how much their lives were alike and different and how each lived in different time periods. "This book is an effort not only to understand the experience of three major women poets whose art spans the period of our nations history, but also suggests the outlines of an American female poetic"(11). Wendy Martin shows how each woman expressed their experience in context during their historical period. "Anne Bradstreet was the first woman poet in the New World; Emily Dickinson, in the nineteenth century, became a model for all women poets who followed, a model of eccentricity and isolation; Adrienne Rich, our contemporary, confronted the meaning of the American female poetic career"(3). All three of these women had to deal with dominant fathers, religion, and ways to find the time to write their poetry. Anne Bradstreet wrote poetry when all of her other obligations as wife and mother were done. This meant that most of her writing
------------------------------------------------------------------------ in her life. "Anne Bradstreet did not risk censure and exile, but her poetry reveals that she continues to have doubts about salvation and eternal like for much of her life"(21). At the end of her life she felt that her faith was based on a profound desire to remain connected to life, whether in this world or the next. To sum up this book An American Triptych, Wendy Martin's writes in her last sentence of the book, "Anne Bradstreet ultimately saw heaven as her home; Emily Dickinson thought her home was paradise; Adrienne Rich tried to envision a society in which all women can be at home"(234). Adrienne Rich was influenced by the "modernist struggle for literary authority as well as the tradition of romantic individualism"(168). In her poetry, Rich describes her frustrations of being a wife, mother and a socialite for her husband. This left her little time to write her poetry and was making her angry. "Adrienne Rich has tried to create a poetic web that can sustain the weight of changed consciousness and a changed life"(171). As a modern woman, Adrienne Rich has had a wide variety of experiences. She has been a "Radcliffe undergraduate, a wife and mother of three sons, a widely read poet, a university professor, a social activist and war resister, a feminist and a lesbian"(171). Martin, Wendy. An American Triptych. Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson made sure she had all the time she neede
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Approximate Word count = 1013
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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