Transatlantic Traffic and (Mis)Translations

7. Prophecy and Geography in Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations”: A Transatlantic Reading

157 chapte r se ve n Prophecy and Geography in Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations” A Transatlantic Reading Edward Holberton M A nne Bradstreet has often been cast in the role of America’s first poet, but her verse can seem frustratingly short on American particulars.1 Recent scholarly interests in empire and ecocritical interpretation have converged to reveal the importance of “landscape as a vehicle of prophecy” (Sweet 214) in early American writing, yet Bradstreet’s poetry has often appeared to show most about the cultures of early colonization when it resists the contingencies of her environment: indeed, Albert Von Frank argues that a “frontier consciousness” begins with the squeamishly generalized natural order of Bradstreet’s early verse (13–15). It has long been recognized, however, that one of Bradstreet’s last and finest poems, the meditative lyric “Contemplations,” is more concretely located in the Massachusetts countryside. This essay develops that local context in the light of recent approaches in transatlantic studies, and reveals that the poem engages with the geography of her surroundings more specifically than has been realized. Paying close attention to contexts of textual and material transatlantic exchange can help us to appreciate the extent to which Bradstreet ’s lyric practice was energized by the perplexities of colonial identity in mid-seventeenth-century Massachusetts. “Contemplations” has been dated to 1664–65 (Rosenmeier 138). It takes the reader on a walk through the countryside around Andover, the village that Bradstreet and her husband had founded twenty years previously. The poem’s autumnal landscape is in motion, and much of it is in the process 158 edward holberton of going somewhere else. The author’s experiences as a migrant seem to inform pangs of envy for birds that can fly south for winter. The surrounding woods become the setting for a vivid reimagining of the Fall and the consequent exile of Adam and Eve, ending with the image of Cain as a “Vagabond” (“Contemplations,” Several Poems, 1.105) traveling to the Land of Nod. The second half of the poem turns around a local brook, full of migrating fish, which become emblems of saving grace and freedom, respectively . I will argue that the circumstances of the Bradstreet family’s settlement in Andover drew the poet’s eye to these details, but it is helpful first to examine how the poem’s dialogue with earlier lyrics sets this process of settlement within particular transatlantic perspectives. Though the humility of Bradstreet’s praise to the Creator is colored by painful reflections upon human limitations, the prevailing mood is gratitude for the contemplative leisure afforded to Bradstreet by the local countryside. This repose is defined in part by adapting the classical poles of otium (rural leisure) and negotium (urban business).2 Accordingly, the migrating fish that Bradstreet picks out become an anthropomorphic fantasy of metropolitan life elsewhere. Having spawned in local pools, they swim out to a subaquatic merchant exchange: Ye Fish which in this liquid Region ‘bide, That for each season, have your habitation, Now salt, now fresh where you think best to glide To unknown coasts to give a visitation, In Lakes and ponds you leave your numerous fry, So nature taught and yet you know not why, You watry folk that know not your felicity. Look how the wantons frisk to tast the air, Then to the colder bottome streight they dive, Eftsoon to Neptun’s glassie Hall repair To see what trade they great ones there do drive, Who forrage o’er the spacious sea-green field, And take the trembling prey before it yield, Whose armour is their scales, their spreading fins their shield. (11. 163–76) Prophecy & Geography in Anne Bradstreet 159 Boston had experienced rapid economic growth in preceding years (Pestana 159). As Massachusetts’ timber and fishing industries began to grow, and Boston’s merchants began to trade with the Caribbean, the town became an Atlantic trade hub, so it is topically fitting that Bradstreet’s conceit multiplies the trade of fish into a trade of fish conducted by fish. This image of negotium also has a topical valency: its reference to piratical “great ones” recognizes that some New Englanders and visitors to Boston had begun to make lucrative careers for themselves as privateers, preying on the shipping of the United Provinces, France, and Spain (Pestana 175). “Contemplations” synthesizes diverse poetic influences: Bradstreet’s choice of Spenserian stanza form has prompted a number...