The Song of Songs: The World's First Great Love Poem (Modern Library Classics)

Ariel and Chana Bloch's new translation of the Song of Songs--the most sexually explicit and sensually rich book of the Bible--is pure delight from beginning to end. Its introduction is an accessible, sophisticated, entertaining, and comprehensive orientation to the literary and religious history of the Song of Songs. The Blochs say the speakers in this poem "don't suffer love, they savor it." Their translation, overflowing with full--almost to the point of florid--feeling ("Feast, friends, and drink / till you are drunk with love!"), arrives at a time when many Jews and Christians are opening themselves to the religious dimensions of sexuality and human love. Song of Songs has a great deal to teach us; this translation is sure to attract many eager students. --Michael Joseph Gross