“Paul Revenson loves to share the Gospel in music and poetry, and he does it with passion and conviction. You will find spiritual comfort and encouragement here.” —David Epstein, Senior Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church, N.Y.C. . “Paul Revenson’s poems are Biblically based and quite imaginative. They brim with truth and common sense, plus interesting rhymes. They are a great devotional source.” —Frank Boggs, First recording vocal artist, Word Records. Smyrna, Ga. “The poet has the uncanny talent to express the Christian worldview in both classical and contemporary flair. Each poem will speak to your heart and mind, and give you a deeper understanding of what it means to be a ‘child of God’.” —Brenda Milliner—N.Y.C. urban missionary.

The Five Quintets is a mammoth poetic adventure undertaken by the celebrated poet Micheal O’Siadhail, attempting nothing less than an exploration of the predicaments of Western modernity. Drawing on inspiration from T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, The Five Quintets brings the premise of Dante’s Divine Comedy into the current day.

For twenty years, celebrated poet Micheal O'Siadhail's beloved wife, Bríd, suffered from Parkinson's disease. O'Siadhail's verses explore the ordinary triumph of human fidelity and sound the depths of parting through a 150-sonnet sequence in which love faces wasting illness and the specter of death. There is tenderness, intensity, and gratitude--which will resonate with all who know both love and loss.

My mother, Ida Laura Ann Beebe, was a very devout Christian for the last eighteen years of her life. After she rededicated her life to Jesus, she read her Bible every day and wrote a lot of poems. Her love for Jesus inspired her to write these poems, and I'm sure you will agree as you read them, that her love is reflected in them and that you will be inspired to feel that love too and to give your heart to Jesus!

The Book of Job contains the only sustained, through-composed work in verse in the Hebrew Bible. This makes it very suitable as a testing area for the rules of verse structure and all other aspects of prosody that were developed in Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible Vol. II and are now also available in Reading Biblical Poetry. This fourth and last volume completes the study that in Vol. I started with Job 3 (curses and complaint), and continued with the first round of the debate (chs.4-14) in Vol. II. Again, the analysis follows two separate circuits: on the one hand that of language, style and structure, on the other hand that of measuring proportions on at least five textual levels. The poetry section of the Book of Job contains 412 strophes, of which the protagonist Job speaks exactly half. His portion of 206 strophes is also divided into equal halves: in 103 short and 103 long strophes. Even more than in the Psalms, the norm figures 7, 8 and 9 play an essential part in the composition of the poems and their average number of syllables per colon. The forty poems of the book exhibit various forms of numerical perfection, and the correct demarcation of strophes and stanzas is found to considerably improve and expand our understanding of its contents.

Acclaimed poet and translator Robert Bly here assembles a unique cross–cultural anthology that illuminates the idea of a larger–than–human consciousness operating in the universe. The book's 150 poems come from around the world and many eras: from the ecstatic Sufi poet Rumi to contemporary voices like Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, Charles Simic, and Mary Oliver. Brilliant introductory essays trace our shifting attitudes toward the natural world, from the "old position" of dominating or denigrating nature, to the growing sympathy expressed by the Romantics and American poets like Whitman and Dickinson. Bly's translations of Neruda, Rilke, and others, along with superb examples of non–Western verse such as Eskimo and Zuni songs, complete this important, provocative anthology.

From the Psalms to the Prophets, from job to Ecclesiastes, much of the Bible is written in poetry. The poems of the Bible include some of its best known and most beloved passages: "The Lord is my shepherd," "Let justice roll down like waters," "By the rivers of Babylon," "Remember your Creator," "Arise, shine, for thy light is come!" These poems live in the hearts of those who are familiar with the Bible and offer rich rewards to anyone who is approaching the world's greatest book for the first time. In The Great Poems of the Bible, Harvard scholar James Kugel presents original translations of the most beautiful and important poems of the Scripture. Taken together, these poems represent the very essence of the Hebrew Bible. Reading them one after another is like taking a guided tour through Scripture, meeting firsthand some of its most important teachings and opening the way to an understanding of the Bible as a whole. Each poem is accompanied by an eloquent and accessible explanation of the poem's language, and a reflection on its meaning. These learned, compact essays introduce readers to the broader spiritual world of ancient Israel. What did people in biblical times believe about God? Where is a person's soul located and what does it do? Is there an afterlife? How does one come to "know" God? Why wasn't Eve meant to be Adam's "helpmate" (Kugel shows how this was just a translator's slip-up), and what does the Bible have to say about the role of women? Kugel's sparkling translations of the poems, together with the fascinating insights that accompany them, distill the very best that the Bible and modern scholarship have to offer. Kugel brings new life to some of history's greatest poems, and offers a new look at a Bible we thought we already knew. Here, in one volume, is a "Bible's bible" that belongs in every home.