• The Taylor is an invented form, patterned from Upon a Spider Catching a Fly by Edward Taylor (1642-1729) who some call the finest colonial poet although his work was not published until 1939. A puritan poet, his poems are lyrical and yet reflect a staunch Calvinist tone.
The Taylor is:
○ stanzaic, written in any number of cinquains.
○ metric, iambic, L1 trimeter, L2 and L4 dimeter, L3 tetrameter, L5 monometer.
○ rhymed or at least near rhymed ababb cdcdd efeff etc.
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly by Edward Taylor
Thou sorrow, venom elf.
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyself
To catch a fly?
For why?
I saw a pettish wasp
Fall foul therein,
Whom yet thy whorl pins did not clasp
Lest he should fling
His sting.
But as afraid, remote
Didst stand here at
And with thy little fingers stroke
And gently tap
His back.
Thus gently him didst treat
Lest he should pet,
And in a froppish waspish heat
Should greatly fret
Thy net.
Whereas the silly fly,
Caught by its leg,
Thou by the throat took’st hastily
And ‘hind the head
Bite dead.
This goes to pot, that not
Nature doth call.
Strive not above what strength hath got
Lest in the brawl
Thou fall.
This fray seems thus to us:
Hell’s spider gets
His entrails spun to whipcords’ thus,
And wove to nets
And sets,
To tangle Adam’s race
In’s stratagems
To their destructions, spoiled, made base
By venom things,
Damned sins.
But mighty, gracious Lord,
Communicate
Thy grace to break the cord; afford
Us glory’s gate
And state.
We’ll Nightingale sing like,
When perched on high
In glory’s cage, Thy glory, bright,
And thankfully,
For joy.
Pasted from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.
My Example
Form: Taylor
Broken Names
I have a friend named Jack,
his brother’s Al.
Their mother wants her old name back
to boost locale
morale.
Since Ackbarr’s now her name
she thinks it’s broken,
perverted by the Islam game
when it’s a token
spoken.
One can’t now yell, “Hi, Jack”
most any where
nor “Allen Ackbarr, glad you’re back!
You been somewhere
by air?”
© Lawrencealot – January 26, 2015
Visual Template
