The Poets' Book of Psalms: The Complete Psalter as Rendered by Twenty-Five Poets from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries

The Poets' Book of Psalms is a complete English-language translation of the Psalms by almost 50 poets from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The formidable team of translators includes John Milton, Philip Sidney, Mary Herbert Sidney, Henry Vaughn, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, and Christopher Smart. On numerous pages of this book, translations made centuries apart appear right next to one another. This stylistic disorientation can be spiritually invigorating: readers are reminded of the eternally fresh meanings hidden in the Bible's familiar words. Here, for example, is George Herbert's translation of the first verses of the 23rd Psalm: "The God of love my shepherd is, / And he that doth me feed: / While he is mind, and I am his, / What can I want or need?" For comparison, a complete King James Version of the Psalter is at the back of the book. --Michael Joseph Gross