0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
New Age Translation , 2008-04-26
Disappointing Taoist Buddhist Interpolation.
This is Stephen Mitchell's Psalms inspired by David.
that is ok, but lets be clear about it.
Mitchell's trans of Rilke are superb, a god-send.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
one more time before the alter , 2005-12-02
Year after year, people have come to the Psalms in their spiritual quests. Here, the author adds one more layer of experience and tradition to the unnumbered people who have added their own input to the historic tradition. For people looking for a fusion with eastern thought, this could be helpful. Also, there is a rich variety of resources on the psalms interconnecting with tradition and experience, particularly those written or editted by Stephen Breck Reid
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
awesome, 2005-09-16
i loved it. reading the bible always makes me feel spanked. mitchell has done with the psalms what G did for moveable type. something about universal accessibility.
9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Not what I wanted, 2004-10-08
The author writes:"I have translated fairly closely where that has been possible; but I have also paraphrased, expanded, contracted, deleted, shuffled the order of verses and freely improvised on the themes of the originals.". This was not bad devotional free verse poetry but to call it specifically a translation of the book of psalms is very misleading. King James version and JPS have done it better. It is more inspired from the book of psalms than an actual translation. I give it a pass.
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Enjoyable but for what audience?, 2002-08-05
Imagine the Tao Te Ching translated into Islamic terms, the Rg Veda reworked as a Judaic text, the Diamond Sutra translated as a Christian text; you are imagining something similar to these reworkings of the Psalms by Stephen Mitchell. While Norman Fischer in his Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms tried to translate the psalms into the universal religious concepts shared with Zen Buddhism, Mitchell recreates the psalms with Zen-specific terminology and contemporary scientific terminology which may clash with the images of the original psalms.Example: from Psalm 148 "Praise him, you bodhisattvas, / you angels burning with his love. / Praise him in the depths of matter; / praise him in atomic space. / Praise him, you whirling electrons, / you unimaginable quarks."
The result is a set of poems which are sometimes "selected & adapted" as the book title implies, but which are often "inspired by". In those poems which speak from a consistent viewpoint, in which the mix of Judaism, Zen and science does not clash, there are excellent poems - the quality and sensativity one associates with Mitchell. Otherwise, this is one of his weaker efforts. It may be read as poetry but does not serve as a way into the psalms.