Edward Taylor

Edward Taylor (1642-1729), of Westfield, is the second notable American poet, after Anne Bradstreet (1612-72), and the first poet of the Berkshires. No poet could hope for a better role model, since an unfettered curiosity was the engine of his creativity, as the excerpt quoted below demonstrates.

Already well educated upon his arrival at Boston in 1668, he studied for the ministry at Harvard, graduating in two years, then accepting a call to go to the western frontier to become minister and physician in Westfield, on the eve of King Philips War. His leadership kept the people from fleeing in the aftermath of the Deerfield Massacre in 1704.

Besides succeeding in establishing a vibrant settlement in the wilderness during the remaining 58 years of his life, he left a body of written matter that would remain hidden for 200 years. One of his grandsons was Ezra Stiles (1727-95), 7th president of Yale College and a founder of Brown University.

Poetry by Edward Taylor

With its dual roots in 17th century diction and dogma, I expected Taylor’s poetry to be overrun with stale diction and errant dogma. My biases were overcome as soon as I read these lines, found in The Preface to his long serial poem, God’s Determination touching his Elect:

Who made the Sea’s its selvedge, and it locks
Like a Quilt Ball within a Silver Box?
Who Spread its Canopy? Or Curtains spun?
Who in this Bowling Alley bowled the Sun?

Those few lines display enough of a nimble imagination to make Edward Taylor worth reading, even long since the world, as he contemplated it, has sunk deep beneath the surface of today’s artificially-informed virtual reality.

Edward Taylor resources online

• Poetry Foundation
• Wikipedia
• Library of America