Willis Barnstone is far from first to recognize the poetry in the Bible—William Blake and Walt Whitman are only two great English-language poets who read past the prose and saw the powerfully condensed imagery of poetry. A poet himself as well as a scholar, Barnstone hopes to awaken new readers to the literary dimension of scriptures through his own verse translations from the original Hebrew and Greek. Proverbs 14: 7-8 becomes “Watch out for a dumbbell,” Solomonic advice for an American public dismayed by its current leadership. Underlying Poets of the Bible is a reminder of scriptures’ origins in cultures of the Near East and of meanings richer than any literal-minded reading.
