"Huswifery" Literary Response

Steve Epting
AP English
“Huswifery” Literary Response
In this poem, Edward Taylor is expressing how he wants God to move through him and guide him. He wants God in every aspect of his life. Taylor wants God to guide him mentally and spiritually. Everything that Taylor does will be for the glory of God and no one else. He wants God to help him with his memory, conscience, judgement , affections, will, and understanding. He wants everything that he does to be pleasing unto God.
Taylor used metaphors to depict his hunger for God in his life. The most descriptive quote in this poem was the first line because it set the tone. “Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat.” That basically means make me what you want me to be. Later in the poem, the author starts to compare letting the Lord use him to knitting on a spinning wheel. I think that is a wonderful example because it represents a skilled tailor designing his masterpiece into the greatest thing he ever made. Taylor wants God to speak through him so that he may talk respectfully. Also, when it says “Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee” it means that he will follow God’s word.
This poem appeals greatly to pathos. I visualized a tailor knitting something that would be great. The word choice in this poem was amazing. Even though the style of writing was very old, I could still understand what it meant. This is a great poem because in every stanza, the author added more and more about how he needed God in every aspect of his life. In the first stanza it is comparing the knitting to being used by God. In the second, it starts to speak on how fine the thread is. The thread represents every personal quality that he has. Each piece of thread is a different color that represents him. In the third stanza, he talks about the inner traits that he has. The author sums up the entire poem by illustrating the entire masterpiece as a robe. All the traits and qualities that he had were intertwined to make a perfect robe portraying the way God wants him to look.