SOURCE: Guruswamy, Rosemary Fithian. “Poetic Art.” In The Poems of Edward Taylor: A Reference Guide, pp. 83-106. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003.

In the following excerpt, Guruswamy comments on the wide variety of stylistic devices Taylor employed in his work.

Taylor's imagery and prosody are largely biblically based, with special attention to the images, points of view, literary figures, and Hebrew prosodic elements found in the Book of Psalms. Nevertheless, the entire Bible was a model for Taylor, a source of language that was still human but that God had sanctioned for human writers to use.

Imagery

Many of Taylor's major image clusters, particularly those found in the Preparatory Meditations, come from the Bible, many more from Taylor's consideration of various exegetical metaphors that had been adapted from biblical words, as well as other art forms that had been modeled on the Bible, such as emblem books. Some of...