Psalms of Nauvoo: Early Mormon Poetry

Hal Robert Boyd and Susan Easton Black.  Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company, 2015.  Hardbound, 6" x 8.75", 256 pages.

In the mid-nineteenth century, in the growing city of Nauvoo, Illinois, poets found ample opportunity for publication in the Times and Seasons, the Wasp, and theNauvoo Neighbor. Others penned poetry in personal correspondence and diaries. Both groups wrote of revelations, restored scriptures, prophecies, temples, and their testimonies of Jesus Christ. Psalms of Nauvoo is a narrative collection of these poems.

The volume opens with the Mormon exodus from Missouri and ends with the Saints’ farewell to Nauvoo as they faced an uncertain future in the American West. This compilation offers a glimpse into the culture, life circumstances, religious heritage, and espoused doctrines of those early Latter-day Saints, allowing readers to catch “the swift thought of God,” as Brigham Young put it.