Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern. Before I turn to

today's poem, I just want to let you know. We will be announcing the winners of our competition here soon.

So make sure that you have checked your Facebook messages and your emails because you may have received a message from me.

I'm actually waiting on one more winner to get back to me before we can make the announcements.

And I want to say there were so many great, great entries. And choosing the winners was very

difficult for us. And I know when you choose winners, there has to be losers

or people who are at least not winners, you know, but I want everybody to know who has submitted

that your kids or you, if you're listening, did an incredible job. And I hope you'll keep doing it.

We are going to try to find some ways to reward as many kids as we can

for putting in all the hard work.

So there's a few things I'm working on right now,

but I suppose I thank you to everyone who submitted.

Today's poem is by Anne Bradstreet.

She was a Puritan poet who lived from 1612 to 1672. She was one of the most prominent poets

of early America. She was the first writer in the North American colonies to be published.

She was published back in England even, and she is considered the first major puritan figure in

American literature. The poem I want to read today, I'll have more to say about it, of course,

here in a few minutes, but it is called the author to her book. And this is actually one of the

poems that I remember most from my time in college studying poetry. I'm not exactly sure why,

because I didn't

particularly love it at the time, but it's one that I remember for some reason. Maybe I'll

be able to figure that out while we're recording here. But here is Anne Bradstreet's, the author

...