This unique anthology brings together over 160 poems directly inspired by the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Readers will be surprised that such world rand authors as Yeats, Rilke, Borges, Eliot, Plath, Milosz, Lawrence, Pasternak, Celan, Akhmatova, Auden, and Wilbur are incisive biblical commentators as well. The poems, which range in tone from playful to confrontational and from ironic to sublime, are set alongside the biblical passages that inspired them. The Annunciation, the Nativity, the Temptations in the Wilderness, the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, are just a few of the narratives that have captured these writers' imaginations. In revisting 2000 year old texts with a twentieth-century sensibility, the poets here bring meanin to them, and offer us a renewed appreciation of their importance.

The Gospels in Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts

Literature & Fiction

Curzon, David

Poetry

Harcourt on Demand

The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.
This volume includes translations Deborah H. Roberts (Ion), J. T. Barbarese (Children of Heracles), Katharine Washburn and David Curzon (The Madness of Heracles), Carolyn Kizer (Iphigenia in Tauris), and Greg Delanty (Orestes).

Euripides, 4 : Ion, Children of Heracles, the Madness of Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Roberts, Deborah H.

Kizer, Carolyn

Delanty, Greg

Barbarese, J.T.

Washburn, Katharine

Dramas & Plays

University of Pennsylvania Press

The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.This volume includes translations Deborah H. Roberts (Ion), J. T. Barbarese (Children of Heracles), Katharine Washburn and David Curzon (The Madness of Heracles), Carolyn Kizer (Iphigenia in Tauris), and Greg Delanty (Orestes).

Euripides, 4: Ion, Children of Heracles, The Madness of Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes (Penn Greek Drama Series)

SLAVITT, David R.

Bovie, Palmer

Eurípides

Following his critically acclaimed Modern Poems on the Bible, David Curzon gave us this book, a look at biblical and other classic Jewish texts through his own witty poetry and prose. After exploring what modern poets made of these ancient tales and then using the literary devices he learned from these poets and from the ancient commentators, Curzon wrote his own collection of midrashim - The View from Jacob's Ladder.

The View from Jacob's Ladder: One Hundred Midrashim

Literary

University Of Nebraska Press

Modern Poems on the Bible is a collection of imaginative and engaging contemporary responses to the Bible. Guided by the classic rabbinic genre of midrash conceived 1,500 years ago, Curzon chooses poems from Jewish and non-Jewish writers alike and places them beside the biblical passages that were their inspiration. Among the more than 170 poems in this collection are those by some of the great modern poets, including Yeats, Rilke, Auden, and Amichai. There are also poems by master prose writers: Primo Levi, Jorge Luis Borges, and D.H. Lawrence, to name a few.

Modern Poems on the Bible: An Anthology

The Jewish Publication Society

David Curzon is best known as the editor of two poetry anthologies on Biblical themes-Modern Poems on the Bible (JPS, 1994) and The Gospels in Our Image (Harcourt Brace, 1995). 
His own poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, testament to the quality and caliber of his work. Hopefully the publication of What Remains, a collection of 90 poems, will introduce a new and broader spectrum of readers to his unique voice and extraordinary range. 
What Remains is his first book of poetry to be published in the United States; (a previous volume, Dovchik, was published in Australia and two previous books-The View from Jacob's Ladder and Midrashim-contain both poetry and prose). 
Curzon's poems are windows into a life passionately lived. They are at once ironic and deeply-felt, erudite and amusing, and always reflective of a Renaissance-range of interests. Born in Melbourne, the son of a Holocaust survivor, David Curzon holds a B.Sc. in physics and a PhD in economics. His career included positions at NASA in Washington DC and as chief of the Central Evaluation Unit at the UN, assessing problems of peace-keeping operations and refugee and environment programs. 
Many poems in this collection are autobiographical ("An Australian Childhood," "The Emigrant," "A Marriage"). Others are meditations on Eastern art and philosophy ("Instructions to a Mustard Seed," "The Tao of Water"). His poems reflect the deep resonances of art in the poet's inner world and his emotional responses to the living concerns of Biblical, Chinese and other ancient texts. Poems like "Uncertainty" and "A Cold Palm Reading" address the reader directly with his concerns. 
Some of his most memorable poems are modern midrashim on Jewish and biblical themes ("Psalm 1"-his unforgettable Holocaust poem, and "To King David"-a paean to his namesake). All of his poems represent a spiritual imagination in the broadest sense of the term. 
Curzon described the genesis of his midrashic poems in a previous book (The View from Jacob's Ladder): "Twenty-five years ago I was in an ashram on the banks of the Ganges; ten years later, in New York, after a great deal of meditation, I came to understand that, profound and attractive as Indian religions and philosophies were, I was in fact, not Hindu." 
He was inspired by a poem by Israeli poet Dan Pagis, who used a midrashic technique in his poem on Proverbs 6:6-starting with a Biblical verse, inserting his own response to it, and following up with a variation on the second Biblical line. The midrashic method of interpretation opened up a new genre for Curzon. He writes: "The poem by Dan Pagis was the key; and through the door of my own resistance that it opened I came to the vast traditions I had been so wary of approaching. I was delighted to learn that these traditions had their own literary devices, and tried using these devices, and found they gave me the freedom to play with the text, to be outraged by the text, to be brought to tears by the text, to be surprised by the strength and nature of my responses, and to begin to discover, through these surprises, myself in my tradition." 
The fruits of this revelation are evident in the midrashic poems in this collection.

What Remains: Selected Poems (Jewish Poetry Project)

Ben Yehuda Press

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