Bible Books

Poetry and the Bible Speaking in Unison

Modern Poems on the Bible: An Anthology

David Curzon, editor (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1994) 377 pp., $35.00

In the modern world we often think that biblical interpretation is the province of the scholar, archaeologist or theologian, specialists who have access to the primary languages and historical data. This wonderful book reminds us that the poet too has a powerful voice in biblical interpretation. Poets plumb different depths than scholars; they are concerned more with the human soul than with the text, more with the present than the past, and their tool is not analysis but artistry. In these respects, as David Curzon elegantly notes, modern poets responding to the Bible are most like ancient or medieval interpreters than modern scholars.