A Poet's Bible: Rediscovering the Voices of the Original Text

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From Wikipedia
A Poet's Bible: Rediscovering The Voices of the Original Text is a 1991 partial translation of the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible, and some related apocrypha, into English, by David Rosenberg. Rosenberg's philosophy in approaching the Hebrew text was to render into English not a literal translation of the Old Testament material for religious purposes, but to capture the essence of the art as viewed by the contemporaries of the authors. Rosenberg argues that most Biblical material has become overly familiar to us, and we are at a loss, for whatever personal reason we may have, to appreciate it as poetry, in and of itself (hence the "rediscovery" of the book's subtitle). To accomplish this, Rosenberg uses a modern poetic form, the triadic stanza favoured by William Carlos Williams, for the majority of the book, and also uses a great deal of modern slang and imagery. Rosenberg describes the latter as Doogri, which is a Modern Hebrew word for street idiom. The book was received well by scholars and critics, but did not do well commercially, and is currently out of print. Read more - Shopping-Enabled Wikipedia on Amazon
In the article: Books Translated | Comparison to KJV
From Library Journal
This is a modern paraphrase of chapters from various books of the Hebrew Bible (Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jonah, etc.) and Apocrypha (Judith and Maccabees). Rosenberg is famous (or notorious) as the translator of Harold Bloom's Book of J ( LJ 10/15/90). Each translation is typefaced with a brief explanatory introduction supplemented by a general introduction wherein Rosenberg attempts to explain his intent--which is to get to the heart of the original text through his "modernizations." Some of his renderings make sense and exhibit poetic feeling (e.g., his treatment of Psalm 23), but the majority are quite bizarre and convoluted when compared to traditional translations (e.g, King James Version of the Bible, Revised Standard Version, Jewish Publication Society Bible, etc.). Buy according to demand.