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

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.