Today in class, we spent the period talking about the poem "Upon a Wasp Chilled With Cold" by Edward Taylor. Mr. Lazarow told us that this was the most complicated Edward Taylor poem that he had given us. In the beginning of the poem, the man finds the wasp on a window sill and it is chilled with cold (much like the title tells us). Then he takes the wasp and puts it into the sunlight and the wasp then goes back to its normal life. Mr. Lazarow also reminded us that we should not translate meanings of things in puritan literature from one piece to the next. So if the wasp meant something in a previous poem, it's not the same thing in this one. Also this poem presents the fact that man is to wasp as god is to man. Throughout the course of the poem Taylor repeats the phrase "as if" to make many similes throughout the entirety of the poem. This poem was supposed to teach those who read it that humans are not as great as we think we are.
The most important thing the wasp does in the story is stretch its "legs" up to the sun which resembles a human praying to god. This action shows the reader that the wasp has found god. The transition from the first to the second stanza in the poem goes from the story of the wasp to the reflection. Or the wasp offering his prayer to the sun to Taylor praying to god. The wasp is the thing to learn and the thing to teach us. The main idea of this poem was to show us that there are lessons to be learned in all things.
We concluded the class period by talking a bit about Anne Bradstreet and discussing how her poems are much more emotionally involved than those of Taylor.
-Joe M
5 comments:
While I like the technique of Taylor's, I think that his poems suffer from essentially being an allegorical writings instead of symbolical ones. In other words, I think the poems we have read have very limited potential for interpretation, which is something essential to a great work.
I think the poems service to a particular group of people - the Puritans, who are dead, and people who like literature and poetry who have time to decipher the works. It certainly isn't a wide-reaching set of poems, though for those who are in the target audience, it makes for more than enough of a literary treat.
-Colin
I would have to agree, these poems were directed towards a particular group of people so they would be intended to have limited room for interpretation. I think that, although in many great works there is potential for interpretation, that it is an essential element to a great work. I think that what a person gets out of a poem and the significance of that message is what should be used to determine how a work is to be judged.
-Kelsey
The interpretations of the poems do seem to be very limited, but this is compensated by making very serious and very real points, which many people even today could identify with. The ideas may be more than 300 years old, but they certainly haven't disappeared from culture (especially religious culture). Many today try to be pure all the way through, not just gilded. A work doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly deep and complex to get point across.
Another thing we identified in this poem was the conceit involving the lines "in whose corporation we a school and schoolmaster see." This shows the conceit that a wasp has the power to teach us something. Since the Puritans looked down upon nature, it must have been shocking to be told that they could learn from a creature of nature. This line also relates to the Puritan values that stress the importance of education.
We also discussed a further analysis of the wasp praying to the sun. It seems as if the person is laughing at the wasp's feeble attempt to understand God. He believes himself to be superior. This also shows that God may look down upon our attempts at prayer as feeble as well. We are not superior to the wasp in terms of faith.
--Alexis
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