Poetry for Students, Volume 31

as toastmaster, Nash transcends all forms of criticism but polite applause: ‘‘In the face of the unanalysable I must not be anal ...

Further Reading Blair, Walter,Horse Sense in American Humor, from Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash, University of Chicago Press, ...

Huswifery The Puritan poet and minister Edward Taylor wrote ‘‘Huswifery’’ sometime in the late seven- teenth century, probably i ...

Author Biography A minister and a poet, Edward Taylor is regarded as one of the most important voices of early American literatu ...

knowledge, indicating that he is fully aware of how fickle his affections can be. At the same time, he acknowledges a purpose in ...

The Common and the Divine Taylor’s choice to use domestic items to make a profound theological point demonstrates his desire to ...

Submission The speaker’s attitude is one of humility and servitude. He never wants to be the one running the spinning wheel, wea ...

say that he wants it. Without it, he misses being able to glorify God on earth and in heaven. Of course, the garment itself is a ...

this is so. The metaphysical poets, primarily British, wrote during the seventeenth century, penning verse concerned with psycho ...

though it is something of a departure from so much of Taylor’s poetry. Generally his poetry has more in common with his sermons, ...

wants to be the loom on which the yarn is taken further through the process. In both metaphors, the speaker sees himself as a pi ...

and the steps in the process that send modern readers looking for footnotes were readily grasped by seventeenth-century American ...

poem appears original more because it developes an image that is no longer familiar to us than because of anything that is bold ...

Who in this Bowling Alley bowld the Sun? Who made it always when it rises set To go at once both down, and up to get? Who the Cu ...

him into the outright competitor of Heaven. His fabrication may be scaled down in size from God’s. But as allegorical resemblanc ...

of a poem. In a kind of greeting-card verse sent to one of his English schoolmates, Taylor wrote: What though my muse be not add ...

two weeks later with a full awareness of the religious meaning of their new garment: Let’s Cloath ourselves, my Dove, With this ...

specific suggestion that the element of righteous- ness is closely connected with the robes of glory. But the precise nature and ...

own very influential congregation: (1) he pro- posed that the Lord’s Supper was not merely a grace-strengthening, but a grace-be ...

Taylor then plunges into theological history for support of his contentions, finding it in the writings of Origen, Theophylactus ...