Modern Poems on the Bible: An Anthology

This readable anthology gathers together passages from the Hebrew Bible and poems by modern writers who have responded to those. Curzon has not tried for an exhaustive compilation but instead hopes to ``illustrate a genre.'' The book contains poems by some of the most well-known writers of the century--William Butler Yeats, Marianne Moore, Rainer Maria Rilke--but also many fine poems by writers less familiar to readers of poetry in English. For example, he includes several offerings by the Israeli poet Dan Pagis, and a chilling poem by the Russian writer Yevgeny Vinokurov, in which Adam, before gaining knowledge of good and evil, dreams of Auschwitz: ``And in his dreams he saw the ovens of Auschwitz / And he saw ditches filled with corpses. / He saw his own children! / In the bliss / Of paradise, his face lit up. / He slept, understanding nothing, / Not knowing good and evil yet.'' Like most compendiums, the book also includes some weaker work. Curzon views modern poetry on the Bible as an extension of Midrash, the tradition of rabbinical commentary, which shares with contemporary criticism a belief in the multivalent meaning of texts. His book provides evidence of the Bible's continued importance to literature, which constantly renews interpretation and pursues contemporary themes. (Dec.)