The Art of Biblical Poetry

by Robert Alter

Analyzes the structure, functions, and metaphors of the poetry in Psalms, Job, Proverbs, and other books of the Old Testament

Genres: Religion, Poetry, Biblical Studies, Theology, Nonfiction, Judaism, Old Testament

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967, and has published many acclaimed works on the Bible, literary modernism, and contemporary Hebrew literature.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of Alter's work can be summed up like this: What at first appears simple, even mechanical, is in fact a work of highly skilled artistry.

This book, on poetry, seemed like a bit of a slog when I was reading it; having read it I find myself noticing biblical poetry and paying more attention to the finer details that I might otherwise have missed. Alter spends the first three chapters explaining how poetry works in the Bible, especially the relationship between the smaller units that make up a line of Hebrew poetry (he calls them "versets"). A lot of the information seemed really familiar, since I'd taken Dr. Leithart's theology class and have heard James Jordan talk about Hebrew poetry quite a bit. The only really new piece of information was that some lines of Hebrew verse have THREE versets, not just two. That helped make sense of some poems that I hadn't been able to figure out before.

The real fun starts when Alter applies those principles to the various "genres" of poetry (psalm, proverb, prophecy, etc). His exegesis of Job is really astonishing, particularly how he points out the poet's insertion of cliches and simplifications into the mouths of Job's friends and compares them to the same point made with greater grandeur in the Lord's speech from the whirlwind. The section on Proverbs is also really good, as he treats each saying as an individual mini-poem with all the movement, contrast, and complexity of a larger verse crammed down into a very small saying.

All in all, quite excellent.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here are my reading status updates, which weave together observation and appreciation. I really don't have much evaluative critique or any counter-proposals to offer.

Chapter one helpfully outlines and explores the various functions of parallelism in Hebrew biblical poetics. The word “kenning” is fun and useful here. By and large, parallelism is developmental rather than static (through there are some rare examples of stasis in parallel structures).

Chapter 2 considers Hebrew poetry’s narrativity (development of metaphor; distinguished from narrative as-such) and consequentiality (cause-and-effect relations between lines). Alter brings to the fore several helpful examples (e.g., David’s victory song, Jael/Sisera, Song of the Sea in Exod. 15, and Prov. 7).

The structures of intensification are dynamic and generative (by necessity due to the linear-serial nature of poetics, and of all literature). Alter’s brief treatment of Job 3 is masterful.

Alter’s treatment of Job focuses especially on the theophanic speeches, and it is very insightful. He makes connections between God’s talk and the protracted discussion that proceeds it among the friends. In God’s speech, ideas and images from earlier in the book are developed climactically by means of poetic forms. In the end, sense and encounter trump exhaustive comprehension.

Not surprisingly, Alter’s treatment of the Psalms is a delight to read. His analytical argument is that the Psalms (at times self-referentially and explicitly) exemplify the use of poetic forms to communicate dense meaning. He considers a representative sample of Psalms in turn to illustrate this point.

The chapter on prophetic poetics argues that poetry (as form) allows for a greater depth, complexity, and timelessness of signification for the prophetic aims of condemnation, warning, and consolation (forth-telling and foretelling). The transformation of a poetic passage into prophetic prose toward the end was instructive and interesting.

Alter is supremely helpful on the poetry of Proverbs. In his chapter-long treatment, he handles the aphorism (one-, two-, and three-line proverbial sayings) FIRST before comparing his findings to the longer proverbial poetic form. His look at the Proverbs’ compactness of expression, their recurring imagery, and proverbial riddles were especially helpful.

Alter takes the uniquely “secular” Song of Songs to examine the Hebrew Bible’s use of metaphor and similitude in figurative poetic language. He identifies three kinds of imagery outside of the Song: “avowedly conventional images, intensive images, and innovative images” (237). In the Song itself, signifier and referent blend into one another in a radical and sustained poetic metaphor about love.

In the last chapter, Alter summarizes his aim of showing afresh how the Hebrew Bible’s poetic forms interlock with meaning. He also gives some examples of what might be called the “reception history” of the Hebrew Bible’s poetry. He helpfully distinguishes between allusion to biblical poetic images and “deep engagement” with biblical poetic dynamics and forms in post-biblical poetry.

[Luke Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time reading this book the whole way through, and I’m so glad I did, because the last five chapters are a goldmine, especially the chapters on Job, the prophets, and Proverbs.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not as rich as his previous volume on Biblical narrative, which I read earlier in the year, but this work still punches above its weight (don't you hate stupid cliches?). Understanding Hebrew poetry is primarily about understanding how parallelism works. If something is repeated in a parallel line, there is ALWAYS a reason. And it's not merely to "fill out the line" or "keep the meter right," as some have supposed. Even "synonymous" parallelism has a purpose. When reading Hebrew poetry, ask yourself why the poet did why he did with the parallelism--he is heightening a metaphor? Expanding it? Contrasting it? Moving it along narratively? And so on and so forth.

So many of us read Hebrew poetry (especially the Psalms and prophets) just like we read prose. That is a mistake. Go read some George Herbert and John Donne, then flip over the psalms. Once you have your "poetry reading goggles on" from those other great Christian masters, you'll be opened to the beauty of the psalms. It takes practice.

[Daniel Piva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recomendo: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
É um livro que se situa entre o o texto técnico e o texto para o leitor leigo, contudo, mais informado sobre a poesia Hebraica Bíblica, e poesia Ocidental.
Contudo, se for o primeiro livro a ser lido nesta área, também terá seus proveitos.
Robert Alter é especialista neste campo de pesquisa, e faz sua redação com profundidade ao mesmo tempo que acessível.
Ele faz boas conexões culturais, linguísticas, e temporais entre as poesias bíblicas, e as modernas, e pós-modernas.
Recomendo para pastores, professores de seminários, e mesmo aqueles que se interessam por aprofundar o conhecimento do texto bíblico, principalmente, os poéticos.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Post-script: I really love this book and hopefully I'll be able to use it in re-reading various parts of the Bible. No question, Alter makes one realize that the Bible was a radical book including poetry to put the most subversive freeverse poet to shame. My favorite chapter remains the one on Job. After reading Nietzsche, it is especially good. My only complaint is I wish there had been a chapter on Ecclesiastes. This is the sort of poetry that Christians should begin any poetic education with.

Original: Whoa! Didn't see that one coming.

This book opens the Evangelical Christian to perhaps one of the few contributions of the 20th century.

Rest assured, Alter is as unnecessarily dense as ever, buying into the enlightenment pretensions about writing. But this time his more pointed barbs are aimed at modernists, whose attempts to get at the 'real' circumstances of the poems fail miserably, tearing them apart for historical origins and giving only the broadest technical understanding.

If Alter dislikes more Christian readings, it is because they tend to obscure poetic enjoyment and with that I must solidly agree: Christians need to see and explore the concrete beauty of the Psalms, avoiding enlightenment proposition-hunting and going beyond the most rudimentary appreciation.

I will go back to Alter's first chapters explaining how Hebrew poetry work as narratives with the tools of intensification, parallelism, specification, heightening, sequence, and more that I wish I knew better. Shame, shame, shame on me.

He then goes on to describe the different genres: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Prophets, and the Song of Solomon. Ecclesiastes, alas, is not here. (Alter's book is very vulnerable to being exceeded.)

His chapters on Job and the Song of Songs are especially memorable. I had heard alternate interpretations of God's response to Job, but was unpersuaded, yet left with the uneasy feeling that God's words as traditionally interpreted are far too similar to those of the three friends. Alter easily points out the theological mistake: ignoring the form of Job as a poem makes us miss the key distinction between God and the friends. The friends speak of the world as understandable, orderly, ho-hum, the sun rises and sets, the good receive good and the bad receive worse. Yahweh in the whirlwind speaks with strong, vigorous imagery. The world He describes is wild, untame, fierce and far bigger than Job.

(To indulge in interpretation: God has raised up man for trouble, for wrestling. Job understands, unlike his friends, that the world is dangerous. It could eat them and no encyclopedia could stop it. God takes Job out of Himself so that he can see the bigger picture of creation, the creation that man like Job was meant to subdue and rule much like God did. Job is being told, "Come on, I want you to be strong enough to grapple with this!")

The Song of Songs chapter badly needs the kind of balance. Biblical, allegorical interpretation is necessary, but it is on the literal level, a secular song. This quote is too good not to quote: "Prevalent preceonceptions about the Hebrew Bible lead us to think of it as a collection of writings rather grimly committed to the notions of the covenant, law, solemn obligation, and thus the very antithesis idea of play. ... Only in the Song of Songs however, is the writer's art directed to the imaginative realization of a world of uninhibited self-delighting play, without moral conflict, without the urgent context of history and nationhood and destiny, without the looming perspectives of a theological world-view. Poetic language and, in particular, its most characteristic procedure, figuration, are manipulated as pleasurable substance: metaphor transforms the body into spices and perfumes, wine and luscious fruit, all of which figurative images blur into the actual setting in which the lovers enact their love, a natural setting replete with just those delectable images."

The last chapter, though short, is perhaps the best stuff Alter has written. As with Job, traditional interpretations of the Bible need to have drilled the idea that form is content: "poetry is quintessentially the mode of expression in which the surface is the depth, so that through careful scrutiny of the configurations of the surface--the articulation of the line, the movement from line to poem, the imagery, the arabesques of syntax and grammar, the design of the poem as a whole--we come to apprehend more fully the depth of the poem's meaning."

He then explains how the sad state of affairs has not always been the case. The English Renaissance in particular could interact with the poems quite freely because they shared a common communal view of poet that broke down with Romanticism and its vision of the artiste.

"Wordsworth looking at the light dawning over Westminster Bridge tries to evoke in words an experience that is uniquely his, though of course he wants to make it intelligible to others through the act of writing. The psalmist, looking up at the moon and stars and pondering the majesty of the heaven and earth God made, uses his own feeling and perception as his point of departure, but they are not really his subject. Rather, in seeing this moment of the natural world's splendor, he is reminded of the timeless truth of the creation story, and he celebrates the created world not as an individual with a unique freight of personal experience but as a member of and eloquent spokesman for the generic category--man."

Doubtless there were differences, but they are differences to be gloried in. By contrast, we are the silent ones.

This is a huge part of our heritage that we have sold for a mess of pottage. Now, more than ever, I want to read God's speech to Job in the whirlwind in the original Hebrew. To enjoy it.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read Alter, it makes me feel like my own writing amounts to a middle schooler’s LA homework. But it’s not just his command of language that makes this book weighty — it’s his conviction in the nature and power of poetry. I will never read biblical poetry the same. I’ll never read poetry the same. … or maybe i will because I’m not Robert Alter.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book holds a deservedly classic position in both literary studies and Bible studies. It's not as epochal a contribution as Alter's companion volume, The Art of Biblical Narrative, which truly trains you to see the Bible in new ways, counterposing literary forms to the plain meaning of the text to help you see different ethical and psychological points that change the entire meaning of the narrative. In contrast, The Art of Biblical Poetry helps you see how the unique (although highly influential) rhetoric and imagery of biblical poetry accentuates and emboldens the themes on the surface of the psalms, prophets, and others. Alter brings out the techniques and philosophical approaches that appear over and over again. The translator had quite a challenge with this book, given all its colloquialisms, and the the style carries the reader through strongly.

Alter starts with essential methods, showing how familiar features of Biblical writing such as repetition and intensification work, then goes through particular passages of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and several prophets.

An overriding trait of Biblical poetry (and a lot of other poetry more than 200 years old) is the creative use of stock phrases and concepts, especially in the psalms and book of Proverbs. To see how Biblical authors could forcefully put forward their ideas in the context of pre-existing metaphors and forms of expression can be encouraging to modern writers, who often feel that everything has been done already.

[Ryle]

This book was so fascinating-- in short, Alter's goal is not just to give his readers a more solid grasp on the mechanics of biblical poetics, but additionally to show that "the spiritual, intellectuall, and emotional values of the Bible that continue to concern us so urgently are inseparable from the form they are given in the poems." He succeeds tremendously and shows the unique ability of poetry to convey a depth of meaning that cannot be conveyed through any other mode of speech. So yeah, it's technical and analytical, but the overall implications are so cool and it makes me appreciate God's word all the more! The chapters on the poetry of the prophets and Song of Songs were especially fun to read.

[David Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two dear friends and trusted bibliophiles (Brian Volk and Leslie Leyland Fields) recently commented in these Goodreads electronic annals concerning Robert Alter's poetic translations of the Psalms. I have little to add to their thoughtful words except to concur that Alter's singing translation are wonderful. Once getting over my lifetime of familiarity with the King James Version, I have come to treasure Alter's translation.

I recently taught a short course on the Psalms and found the differences between Alter's and the KJV a useful matrix to begin discussing the Psalms. I used Atler's book, "The Art of Biblical Poetry" as my supplemental text and found that volume helpful fleshing out the discussion of Biblical poetry. I would recommend "The Art of Biblical Poetry" as a useful resource for teachers less comfortable with poetic form than with theological constructs. Actually, I would recommend both of Alter's texts as essential for those wishing to study the Psalms. Both Alter's books are full of well-written prose and poetry as well as scholarly analysis and critique--who could want more?

[Bryan Sebesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a great book, that granted me new eyes to see what I couldn’t before: that the poetry in the Bible is powerful and multivalent; it has general rules with, of course, temporal and authorial variety; the literary qualities has a direct connection to the meaning of the text; and if I’m to understand the poetic parts of the Bible, I ignore the poetry at my peril. Luckily, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ignore the poetry again. Alter's very good at helping you see what you couldn't before: the complexity of Biblical poetry. But it does follow a few simple rules (i.e. semantic parallelism and a tendency to intensification) that makes Biblical poetry so much fun to read.

He starts with three chapters that lay the groundwork of Biblical poetry. Then he goes through the major Biblical books in turn, showing how they work: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, and the Prophets. Each chapter is a great reference that I'll use when I turn to each of those books in the future, wanting to understand how its poetry works.

[matt]

If we could actually hear God talking, making His will manifest in words of the Hebrew language, what would He sound like? Since poetry is our best human model of intricately rich communication, not only solemn, weighty, and forceful but also densely woven with complex internal connections, meanings, and implications, it makes sense that divine speech should be represented as poetry.

[Simdumise Poswa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Read on Biblical Poetics

Altar has done a great job explaining step by step how to approach biblical poetry. This is recommended reading for anyone studying biblical poetic books or portion (like part of the prophetic books).

[Will Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to transform your reading of Hebrew poetry? Read this.

[Brandon Hawk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Following on his work in The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter turns his criticism to Hebrew poetry, using the same techniques of "literary" scholarship for analysis. In my mind, this book, unfortunately, is less successful than its predecessor. There are, of course, moments where the book is helpful. These come out most in the analyses of specific passages, when Alter is able to hone his generalities into particular literary exegesis. For students seeking to work on biblical poetry, these moments provide helpful base-lines from which to work; they are a type of starting-point to open further ways of reading. In this, the book is a helpful introduction at its most basic level.

Beginning with the familiar negative critiques of previous historical-critical biblical scholarship, Alter immediately sets his work as an innovation in understanding Hebrew literature--but it ultimately fails to demonstrate anything particularly illuminating about biblical poetry. Many of my disappointments, in fact, may be found in James Kugel's review (Journal of Religion 67 (1987), 66-79). As I suspected while I read this book (and as Kugel's review claims), there is little new proposed in Alter's basic literary approach to biblical poetry: he does, in fact, crib much of his own thinking from previous authors. Most notably and prominently, his thinking comes from a constellation of ideas expounded by Robert Lowth (1753), Benjamin Hrushovski (1971), and James Kugel himself (1981)--all of whom had discussed parallelism in biblical poetry before. The difference, for Alter, is that he sets all of these concepts within a (formalist) "literary" way of reading, in stark opposition to the "excavative" critics he insists on attacking.

For an introduction to the subject, Alter's book is worth a look--especially for its place in the rise of "literary" criticism on the Bible; in the end, however, Alter's work doesn't quite live up to expectations.

[Daniel Supimpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting study on the nature of biblical nature. This work is not as brilliant as Alter's book on Narrative, but still a valuable endeavour. Alter provides an alternative to the more recently established model of biblical parallelism developed by James Kugel and refined by Adele Berlin, among others. His treatment of biblical metaphors and escalation are worth the read. Alter, however, gives little reference of other ANE poetical literature. Alter's explanation of ancient Hebrew poetry works is justified on the basis of the rhetoric and insightfulness of the resulting analysis, rather than of the possibilities available to the ancient authors. In other words, what is the foundation to affirm that the Hebrew poets aimed to create, say, escalation in developing biblical verses? There should be at least an indication that this was their purpose or context. Other than that, the book is highly readable and pleasant.

[Jesse Broussard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishingly, I wasn't quite as taken with this as I was with his Art of Biblical Narrative (an easy five star book, and one of my favourites of all time). I assumed, thinking trochee's and speaking in dactylls as I do (you try to fit "iambic" into an iamb without rewriting that sentence), that I would gravitate to the poetry. But I've read that one book (you know, that one with the blue cover...), I think it's "The Structure of Biblical Language" or something close to that a solid half-dozen times, and I felt that a lot of this book was already known to me. It was still excellent, just not as earth shaking as his Biblical Narrative was (for me, at least). Solid four stars.

[Gwilym Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harder work than it sometimes needs to be (especially in the opening chapters), and held back in one or two places by critical presuppositions that Alter mostly manages to sidestep. But excellent in so many ways. I think Alter's understanding of Hebrew parallelism as essentially dynamic is utterly compelling, but even more helpful is his sensitivity to the distinctions between the way that parallelism works (and the purposes it therefore serves) in prophecy, Proverbs, Job and Psalms. The chapters on Proverbs and prophecy are especially valuable: so good to be able to explain not just how parallelism works, but what it does. Well worth this second read, and I'm sure I'll come back for more!

[Isaac Barton · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this isn't the most exciting reading imaginable, and I certainly have more than a few quibbles with the author concerning the nature of the Bible, Alter's perspective is something more than just valuable. I feel like I leave this book understanding biblical poetry a bit better. Many of the principles from this book will be scribbled nearby as I read biblical poetry for, I predict, years to come. When I put this book down I felt compelled to go back to the Psalms and read them again. That's a win in my book.

[Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pros:
+ Alter goes deep into the forms and conventions of Hebrew poetry. I already knew about the primary forms of parallelism and such, but the further understanding I gleaned from this book made SO much more sense of the Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets.
+ Profound insights into the literary intricacies of Biblical poetry -- especially Job, Proverbs, and Song of Songs.

Cons:
+ The organization of information within the first three chapters was, at times, difficult to wrap my head around. Headings might have helped.
+ Unnecessarily long and daunting paragraphs.

[Jerome · Rating 4 out of 5]

"art" captures perfectly was this book exudes.

[Travis Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book for an intro to Biblical poetry. A bit reductionistic in places, but at least he is willing to admit it.

[Eric Chevlen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is not completely lost in translation, but its vigor is diminished. Reading poetry in translation is like kissing your beloved through a veil: you go through the same motions, but the feeling isn't quite the same.

One might think, therefore, that a book in English on the art of Biblical poetry would be a doomed project from the start. But that expectation proves incorrect. Robert Alter's book is a lovely introduction to understanding the poetry of the Bible. The author makes an occasional reference to the language of the original text, but only when necessary to elucidate a musical or semantic point; the author does not use Hebrew letters for this purpose. (For those who can read Hebrew, this is actually a shortcoming in this book, but it is not a fatal flaw.)

Alter addresses some of the snatches of poetry that appear in the prosaic books of the Bible--Deborah's song and the Song at the Sea are obvious examples--but focuses more on Psalms, Job, Song of Songs, and the Prophets.

I was surprised to learn that the idea of parallelism was recognized as a key feature of Biblical poetry (at least in the European literature) only in the 18th century, when it was highlighted by Anglican Bishop Robert Lowth. The early Rabbinic commentators, such as Rashi (1040 - 1105) and Radak (1160 -1235) were certainly not oblivious to the feature, but often describe it as the author of the poetic text's saying the same thing in different words. Just as a fish does not know that it is wet, so perhaps the early rabbis were so immersed in the Biblical texts that they could not see how they contrasted with other poetic forms.

Alter describes how the second hemistitch--which he calls a "verset"--of a line of Biblical poetry doesn't merely restate the first line, but rather usually offers a more focused or intense example, or perhaps offers a consequence or contrast of the first verset. Consider, for example the famous passage from Isaiah 1:3, where we read, "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; But Israel does not know, my people do not consider.” This example is atypical, but not rare, in that it consists of three or four versets. The Prophet is building up to a damning comparison. Even a dumb ox knows the identity of its owner, the one who feeds it. Dumber than the ox is the donkey. He may not know who his owner is, but he can at least recognize the manger where he eats as the source of his sustenance. Isaiah criticizes his people by contrasting them to the animals. Not only don't they know what the beasts know, they don't even consider the question.

Another structural feature found in some Biblical poetry (and also in Biblical narrative) is called chiasmus. Think of it as ABBA.
For example, consider Proverbs 13:24:

חושך שבטו שונא בנו ואהבו שחרו מוסר

He that spares his rod hates his son;
But he who loves him, promptly chastises him.

In his discussion of Song of Songs, Alter recognizes the traditional Rabbinic interpretation of the work as being a metaphor of the love of God for his chosen people. However, although that is a valid interpretation, and indeed may be the reason the book is included in the canon, Alter discusses it as traditional love and marriage poetry (epithalamia) of the ancient Near Middle East.

Readers who have no love for poetry or the Hebrew Bible will find little of interest in this book. However, those who have one of those loves may find it worth perusing. Those who have both will want to read the book slowly and attentively.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this sequel to his Art of Biblical Narrative (1981), Robert Alter examines the use of poetry in the Hebrew Bible. He begins with three chapters in which he discusses certain chief characteristics of its poetry: the various forms of parallelism, the operation of consecutive lines to introduce a narrative effect, and strategies of intensification. Alter then treats in turn the poetry of Job, the Psalms, the Prophets, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs. In a final chapter, he examines the continuing influence of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible from ancient times to our day.

Throughout the book, Alter stresses that the employment of poetry is not an aesthetic add-on, or, as he puts it in his closing chapter, “there is an essential connection between poetic form and meaning. . . . The choice of the poetic medium . . . was not merely a matter of giving weight and verbal dignity to a preconceived message but of uncovering or discovering meaning through the resources of poetry.”

The Prophets abound in prose sections as well as poetic. In discussing what may have dictated the employment of one or the other, Alter makes a provocative suggestion that poetry is the most appropriate medium for how God would speak: “Since poetry is our best human model of intricately rich communication, not only solemn, weighty, and forceful but also densely woven with complex internal connections, meanings, and implications, it makes sense that divine speech should be represented as poetry.”

Alter is a scholar, and his writing is not particularly accessible, but I found the book well worth my time. I learned a great deal from his analyses and took away insights that will help me in my own reading.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a landmark work in the study of biblical poetry, and one that I found engaging and illuminating. Alter spends the first three chapters building on previous understandings of Hebrew poetry, bringing into further clarity aspects of biblical poetry like the complexities of parallelism, the nature of poetic progression and intensification, and the relationship and connections between poetic expression and narrative. Chapters four through eight are perhaps the high point of the book as Alter explores the differences in poetic style and articulation between various biblical texts: Job, the Psalms, Prophetic texts, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs. Alter says that his purpose in writing the book was in part "to suggest an order of essential connection between poetic form and meaning that for the most part has been neglected by scholarship" (256). At this he does an admirable job, carefully distinguishing the precise form of poetic expression in different biblical texts and genres and suggesting how these differences affect the meaning and interpretation of those texts.

[Kevin Rosero · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me the best part of this book is its treatment of the Book of Job, in the two chapters, "Structures of Intensification" and "Truth and Poetry In the Book of Job." The Book of Job is a poem, of course, and Alter, taking it as poetry and not just as a story that could have been told in prose, finds meanings in God's answer to Job that I had never quite heard before -- had never quite felt or visualized before. Poetry is, among many things, a language of images, and the images used by God are direct answers to those used by Job, to summarize Alter's argument perhaps too simply.

As Alter puts it, there is a "nice match of meaning and imagery" between Job's famous death-wish poem and God's answer.

The first chapters of Alter's book are the hardest going, as he lays the groundwork. He explains the particular structure of Biblical poetry -- how one line of poetry consists of two "versets," the second usually intensifying or specifying the meaning expressed in the first.

Once that ground is explained, the book takes off with close readings of poems like Job, Psalms, Proverbs. And once you've been alerted that meaning is tied into form, you can never read these texts the same way again.

Here Alter gets into questions such as:

- why poetry should be the best way to imagine the voice of God

- how the intensification in each line of poetry was ideally suited for the social and ethical criticisms of the Prophets, for Jobian complaints or Psalmodic pleas for help, as distinct from the kind of themes expressed in sonnets or in Whitman's verse

- how the author of the Book of Job compares to Shakespeare in his use of language

I also liked the chapter on Proverbs, which is the Bible book that can be seen as containing the most simplistic theology; Alter, reading it as poetry, finds subtlety and even riddles, not just in the surface language but in the theology.

Interesting and helpful all around.

[Rachel Zehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found I didn't have the background knowledge of biblical scholarship to understand well the technical aspects of the close readings. I almost abandoned the book several times and just skimmed some of the central chapters. Even this cursory reading, though, was enough to show me that Alter's close readings were brilliantly done.

Too bad some of his sentences are such that you emerge at the end a little dazed and wishing you had packed a little more for the journey than just a small carry-on. The sentences are long, in case my metaphor isn't clear.

I hope I return to the book, and I think I know what sort of reading may be most useful. Digested as stand-alone chapters, perhaps alongside preparation for teaching a Bible study class of some kind, this book could prompt some fruitful reflection on the literariness of the form and content of Scripture.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no newbie to reading books on poetry craft but this is tough sledding, which probably only highlights how different Biblical (ancient, non-Western) poetry is from anything we in the West are more familiar with. This is pretty technical and you have to look carefully for the general principles in the numerous details and examples in the first three chapters. Ironically once you get a hold of these principles it's a far less cumbersome system than many of the taxonomies of parallelism in "primers" to Biblical poetry I've seen. . . . As with his book on Biblical Narrative, Alter is supreme at arguing for the literary quality of the ancient texts and the need to pay more attention to them, regardless of any religious bias we might have against them, as we do with other literatures.

[James Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biblical poetry here means poetic language of the Hebrew Testament. Interesting chapters on Job, the prophets, and Song of Songs; less interesting chapters on Psalms and Proverbs. I enjoy the author's approach to Biblical language. Worth reading for its poetic insights, not its theological insights.

[Zachary Horn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even for Alter, this gets exceptionally technical (not to mention verbose) too frequently to rate higher for me. Alter is a literary master who often provides trenchant insight, but too often these insights were obscured by the technical means of expression.