Puritianism
Perhaps if Edward Taylor had allowed his poetry to be published during his lifetime or in the event of his death, course of how Puritanism would come to be viewed might have forever changed. Until the bulk of Taylor’s truly prodigious output was discovered in the 1930’s the words “Puritan poetry” remained practically oxymoron. Certainly no other religious figure so steeped in organized Puritanism has so far exhibited such an equally extensive and profound understanding of and talent for writing verse. For Taylor, much of his most effective poems are genuinely impossible to unlink from his day job; he worked out many of concepts that would show up in his sermons through poetry. An entertaining and enlightened understanding of what it means to be a Puritan can be gained by reading the poems of Taylor.
Self-Examination
Taylor’s verse is always passionately meditative as he seeks to understand the larger problems of the world through application to himself. This is partly a reflection of his Puritan sensibility in that seeking to cleanse obstructions to soul which might impede God’s grace, but it is also a very artistic and aesthetic response to the problem of application of his own sermon to daily life. To be an effective minister, one must believe in the words they are preaching. Taylor discovered an effective means of filling the gap that too often exists between preaching what to practice and practicing what is preached by using the poetry as a sort of distancing device in which he could receive a sermon to work out for himself like a member of the congregation in order to attain the necessary self-confidence to tell others how to live.
The Fear of a Hardening Heart
A theme that invariably and irregularly recurs through the canon of Taylor’s poetry is the revelation a profound and sincere anxiety—really verging on an outright fear—that all the hardships and personal tragedies he has overcome and faced will eventually and inexorably lead toward a hardening of his heart toward God. Within this fear, the theme is also realized in the portrait of poetic figure struggling mightily to see the beauty in the world and rejoice in those images so that his heart remains soft and open to receiving God’s grace rather than locking it shut and denying entry.
