Drawing a unique map of the history of English poetry, Chapters Into Verse surveys and defines the literary legacy of the Scriptures from the fourteenth century to the present. Arranged in scriptural order from Genesis to Revelation, the book presents each poem alongside the biblical passage that inspired it. Thus readers can conveniently witness the various ways sacred text has sparked the imagination of poets throughout the ages. The editors have included poems by virtually all the prominent religious poets--among them John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Edward Taylor, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Included, too, are devotional and visionary works from a wide range of vintage poets--Robert Burns, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Browning. Proving that the Bible is just as powerful a source of inspiration today as it was in the past, the collection also assembles a mixed congregation of modern and contemporary poets, such as Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Countee Cullen, e.e. cummings, William Butler Yeats, Laura (Riding) Jackson, A.D. Hope, Denise Levertov, and Philip Levine. Of enduring interest to readers of both scripture and literature, this anthology illuminates key passages of the Old and New Testament. In selection after selection, readers will encounter an astonishing variety of religious experiences, as a host of poets from many eras and many backgrounds respond to Holy Scripture profoundly and imaginatively.

About the Author
Robert Atwan is the Series Editor of The Best American Essays and co-edits the successful Oxford textbook Popular Writing in America with Don McQuade.

Reviews
"This volume is a useful reader to accompany primary formal texts in Biblical interpretation courses....The reader is introduced to little known authors whose interpretations of biblical texts are quite insightful."--Hal Warlick, High Point University "This is a rich collection that could be used effectively in literature and religion classes. Because it has the Bible as its focus, it may elicit more than passing interest from those who usually shy away from poetry."--Kliatt "Occasionally there appears a religiously oriented work of such originality and obvious usefulness that one wonders why no one did it before. A stellar example is Chapters Into Verse."--Publishers Weekly "Spiritually, stylistically and chronologically, the range is absolutely astonishing."--Parade Magazine



Book Information
ISBN 9780195136760
Author Robert Atwan
Format Paperback
Page Count 512
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 717g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 29mm