Psalms

These psalms grow out of a decades-long fascination with the biblical psalms, particularly the Davidic psalms, which portray the tempestuous, sometimes awful intimacy of the Divine-human relationship. In the lightning-shot Psalm-space where Divine meets human, time shatters, splits, leaps like a river, and so does the soul of the speaker, now hunting God, now hunted, now languishing in despair, now reclining in quiet triumph against the pillars of Heavens. These contemporary psalms attempt to create a corollary to that biblical psalm space, a space narrowed to a single room in which God and the speaker have no choice but to face and struggle toward one another through the whirlwind of pain and love.


About the Author
Joy Ladin is David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College of Yeshiva University. Her previous books of poetry include Transmigration (2009), The Book of Anna (2006), and Alternatives to History (2003).