him into the outright competitor of Heaven. His
fabrication may be scaled down in size from
God’s. But as allegorical resemblances give way
to conceits, there can be little doubt about its
having all the better of it poetically. To the ques-
tion, ‘‘who did this?’’, the only legitimate answer
has to bethe poet did it—did it, true enough, by
working with materials that God gave him, but
did it, all the same, through the power of his own
unique insight and through the capacity he had
for translating insight into language....
Source:Clark Griffith, ‘‘Edward Taylor and the Momen-
tum of Metaphor,’’ inELH, Vol. 33, No. 4, December
1966, pp. 448–60.
Norman S. Grabo
In the following excerpt, Grabo examines the
image of the robe in ‘‘Huswifery’’ in the context
of Taylor’s other writings.
‘‘Huswifery’’ is perhaps Edward Taylor’s
best known poem, though certainly not his
best. From its first appearance in 1937, it has
been reprinted, anthologized, and alluded to
more frequently than any of his other poems,
and perhaps the spinning wheel image of the
first line is the one most clearly etched in readers’
memories. But Taylor is a poet of striking first
lines, and his readers tend to forget, if they did
not from the beginning ignore, the remainder of
the poem. And in this sense, of those poems
available to readers, ‘‘Huswifery’’ might as read-
ily be described as Taylor’s least known poem.
Certainly the poem is clear enough. Its
three-fold division is neat, orderly, more-or-less
logical: first yarn spun on the poet-wheel, then
that very yarn woven, fulled, and ornamented
upon the poet-loom, and finally the finished gar-
ment worn upon the poet’s soul as a holy robe
for glory. Moreover, no more than ten words are
recondite, quaint, or technical enough to merit
close attention—words pertaining to spinning,
weaving, and decorating cloth—and once they
are made clear, one feels somehow that the poem
as a whole makes sense. In fact, the language of
‘‘Huswifery’’ is common and direct, without syn-
tactic tricks or flourishes, and really quite ordi-
nary. And although the intricacies of his conceit
challenge understanding, they yield readily to
analysis, for Taylor spells out the psychic and
religious equivalents of his images in the poem
itself. For these reasons, most critical remarks on
‘‘Huswifery’’ occupy no more than a paragraph
of random observation or structural re ́sume ́.The
‘‘meaning’’ of the poem is ordinarily dismissed in
a sentence, as self-evident. In short, ‘‘Huswifery’’
simply does not seem to need explication.
Yet I would declare that in spite of the trans-
parent obviousness of Taylor’s language, or per-
haps because of it, readers have not recognized
‘‘Huswifery’s’’ very specific meaning and use. I
would further suggest that this meaning hinges
upon Taylor’s ‘‘Holy robes for glory,’’ that no
critic has yet explained what these robes are, and
therefore that ‘‘Huswifery’’ is not yet understood
according to Taylor’s probable intention. No
matter how ingeniously the poem’s other details
are explored, the poem is meaningless until its
‘‘Holy robes for glory’’ are clearly identified. The
problem is—and this is typical of all Taylor
poems—that the full meaning of its terms is not
contained in the poem itself, but draws from the
entire body of Taylor’s writing, including his
prose. Nevertheless, the key to this meaningis
in ‘‘Huswifery,’’ in the weaving or cloth-making
image itself, which Taylor was very fond.
Several reasons are frequently advanced to
account for Taylor’s use of weaving. In the first
place, his Leicestershire birthplace lay near the
heart of England’s weaving industry. Then, too,
a spinning wheel and loom were common house-
hold objects, both in England and on the Amer-
ican frontier, where he lived from 1671 on.
Moreover, especially in England, he could not
have missed the devotional devices wrought into
clothing and hangings for all manner of uses.
And besides, there were Biblical precedents for
the image, some of which found their way into
theological works known and used by Taylor.
But regardless of its sources, one may learn what
weaving meant to Taylor by examining those
passages in his writing where the garment-mak-
ing process functions structurally.
Taylor’s earliest known use of the image has
no specific religious associations, but stands for
the interweaving of love and language in the fabricTHE PROBLEM IS—AND THIS IS TYPICAL OF
ALL TAYLOR POEMS—THAT THE FULL MEANING OF
ITS TERMS IS NOT CONTAINED IN THE POEM ITSELF,
BUT DRAWS FROM THE ENTIRE BODY OF TAYLOR’S
WRITING, INCLUDING HIS PROSE.’’Huswifery