American poetry, the poetry of the United States,
arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices
to English poetry in the 17th century well before
the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies,
although before this unification a strong oral
tradition often likened to poetry existed among
Native American societies. Unsurprisingly, most of
the early colonists' work relied on contemporary
British models of poetic form, diction, and theme.
However, in the 19th century a distinctive American
idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century,
when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic
audience abroad poets from the United States had
begun to take their place at the forefront of the
English-language avant-garde.
Anne Bradstreet (March 20, 1612 – September 16, 1672),
née Dudley, was the most prominent of early English
poets of North America and first writer in England's
North American colonies to be published. She is the first
Puritan figure in American Literature and notable for her
large corpus of poetry as well as personal writings
published posthumously.
Born to a wealthy Puritan family in Northampton, England,
Bradstreet was a well-read scholar especially affected by
the works of Du Bartas. A mother of eight children and the
wife of a public officer in the New England community,
Bradstreet wrote poetry in addition to her other duties. Her
early works read in the style of Du Bartas but her later
writings develop into her unique style of poetry which centers
on her role as a mother, her struggles with the sufferings
of life and her Puritan faith.
Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas (1544, Monfort – July 1590,
Mauvezin) was a Gascon Huguenot courtier and poet.
Trained as a doctor of law, he served in the court of Henri
de Navarre for most of his career. Du Bartas was celebrated
across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe for his
divine poetry, particularly L'Uranie (1584), Judit (1584),
La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578), and La Seconde
Semaine (1584-1603).
Relatively little is known about Du Bartas’ life.
Born in 1544, Guillaume Sallustre descended from
a family of wealthy merchants in Montfort (in the
Armagnac region). His family name later became
‘Saluste’ rather than 'Sallustre', perhaps to invite
comparison with the Roman historian Sallust. He
was possibly a student at College de Guyenne in Bordeaux
(Michel de Montaigne’s school), and studied law
in Toulouse under Jacques Cujas: he became a doctor
of law in 1567, and subsequently a judge in Montfort
in 1571. He gained the lordship of nearby Bartas
(becoming Sieur Du Bartas) on his father’s death in 1566.
He married Catherine de Manas, a local noblewoman,
in 1570 and they had four daughters together: Anne,
Jeanne, Marie and Isabeau.