“The Author to Her Book” compares Bradstreet’s poems to her children, establishing a central conceit in the poem, and bringing her poems alive. She is calling her poems “her babies,” which is made significant by the fact that she’s a woman. In the collection of Bradstreet’s poems that we read this week, it seems that she supports a feminist agenda, while also embracing aspects of a traditionally feminine identity. In “The Author to Her Book,” she is both embracing and changing our perspective on feminine identity. By comparing her poems to babies, she conveys how much she cares about them. This works, because traditionally, women were supposed to stay home and nurture their children. But by personifying her poems as her babies, she is demonstrating a use for her “feminine qualities” (writing poetry) other than rearing children. The story she tells begins with Bradstreet calling these poems “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain” (line 1). She continues to describe herself in self deprecating ways, and characterizes herself as insufficient in keeping her poems safe from the world. She explains all the things she tried to do to shape her poems into something great, but how in the end they would always be flawed. I think that this speaks to the difficulties of raising children, and her self-criticism embraces her imperfections. In the last lines of the poem, Bradstreet writes “If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; \ And for thy mother, she alas is poor, \ Which caused her thus to send thee out the door” (lines 22-24). I’m not sure what to make of Bradstreet instructing her poems to claim they had no father. Is she expressing how inadequate men are at raising children too, or is she exempting men from the responsibilities of raising children?