People often ask how I, a reasonably au courant, twenty-first century sort of person, came to write a biography of Anne Bradstreet, a deeply religious Puritan poet who lived over three hundred and fifty years ago. On the surface, the two of us seem an improbable pairing.

After all, my last literary endeavor was a collection of poems entitled When the Grateful Dead Came to St. Louis. From acid to Anne. From sex and rock and roll to chastity belts and psalms. What happened to Charlotte? my friends wanted to know.

Certainly, once upon a time, if I had met a writer who was bent on telling Anne's story, I, too, would have been mystified. Why write about Puritans, the horrible people who tortured Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter? Weren't they repressive, repressed, and tyrannical? How could any great art be created during such a primitive time?

But sometimes even hipsters need the past in order to understand the present. When I began my writing life as a poet, the two most famous female poets were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, both of whom committed suicide. I was haunted by the idea that, for women poets, art and self-destruction went hand-in-hand. Maybe it was impossible to be both a poet and a survivor. Maybe the two had to cancel each other out.

In 1991, I moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts and took a job as an English teacher. Anne Bradstreet was the first author on the course syllabus and I dreaded teaching her work. Having never actually studied Anne in school, all I knew about her was that she was the "first" American poet, whose appearance in textbooks and anthologies seemed merely obligatory. Besides, I considered anything to do with the Puritans boring.

The day before my first class, I noticed a historical plaque mounted on a stone three doors down from my apartment. This seemed curious: What significant event could have happened in sleepy little Ipswich? Did George Washington stop here?

But no, the plaque proclaimed the odd fact that Anne and her husband, Simon, had once lived here, right down the street from me. I got one of those shivery thrills that happen sometimes when you experience a strange synchronicity.