Sixty-one Psalms of David

the long version

This is not so much another translation as an inspired and engagingly fresh rendition of the Psalms. Following the tradition of Ezra Pound's versions and Robert Lowell's Imitations, David R. Slavitt - himself an esteemed poet and translator of Ovid, Virgil, Seneca, and others - casts the Psalms into a modern idiom that stays faithful to the original but strikes the ear remarkably like contemporary speech. Perhaps the most innovative and immediately appealing feature of these renditions is Slavitt's skillful use of traditional poetic forms. Here the Psalms are compressed, clarified, and given the satisfying shapes and textures of English poetry. Working most often in rhymed tetrameter quatrains, but also employing rhymed couplets and other forms, Slavitt brings all the subtlety and expressive power of English versification to these Psalms, and the result is a poetry that fits comfortably in the lineage that includes Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, William Blake, and Richard Wilbur.