The Word from Porter Street, Installment #4
The latest installment of The Word from Porter Street includes a brief review of the Society of Early Americanists conference in March 2011, a look at my work on Cotton Mather’s efforts to introduce Isaac Watts’s hymns to America, and my reading of the poem “Brooding” by Kimiko Hahn. Approximate length: 7 min. 45 sec.
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Selfishly eating up your work on Mather and Watts! My sense was that Watts’s introduction initiated a different relationship between hymns (and poetry) and the pastor but I hadn’t done the pre-1740 work to confirm this. Samuel Davies’s sermons, when they were sent to his editor in manuscript, included his poems. But, because there wasn’t a poem for EVERY sermon, the editor removed them. I was always fascinated by this editorial decision for uniformity and Davies’s use of the poem and hymn in relation to his sermon. For him, they were truly sermons in miniature, cheat-sheets, for his congregants to remember what he had said, and also a way to prepare his emotions for delivering the sermon. Enough rambling. Enjoyed this!