A Guided Tour Through the Darkling Psalter
A peek into my process and round-up of the most popular posts
What is the Darkling Psalter?
The Darkling Psalter is a project to create renditions of the Psalms (artistic rewordings based in the original Hebrew), notes, commentary, and original poems to pair with each one.
A Guided Tour Through The Most Popular Posts
I’ve sorted the posts into semi-illuminating categories below, but if you want to zoom to your favorite Psalm, here is the list of Psalms completed so far: 1, 8, 14, 19, 22, 29, 32, 34, 42, 46, 51, 53, 73, 84, 86, 88, 107, 130, 137, 142.
Posts to Read for the Surprising Theology
Psalm 22—The Chasm and the Passage. The notes on this rendition dive into the question of what the “bulls of Bashan” are that crowd around the suffering main character in the Psalm (who the gospels identify as the crucified Jesus) and connects them to the mysterious Nephilim from Genesis 6.
Psalm 84—The House of Many Rooms. The temple is the focus of this Psalm and the notes consider the nature of the soul and why on earth there would be birds in the house of God?
Psalm 46—The Silence Between Breaths of Bellsong. Why are mountains and the sea so significant in the Bible? What is really going on with that time when Jesus said that you could make mountains fall into the sea if you had enough faith?
A Post to Read for the Interesting Hebrew Translations
Psalm 32—Deep Heaven’s Diagonal Plumb. What do you do when the words of our modern Bible translations just don’t capture what the Old Testament says in the Hebrew? The notes for this Psalm offer one approach to the dilemma.
Poems Dealing With a Difficult, Beautiful Calling
Psalm 73—We Laughed As Loud and As Wild As We Would. This is a poem that reflects on the complicated, beautiful work of L’Abri Fellowship - where I was a worker for several years.
Psalm 29—My God, My Whisper Of Flame. And this one is a reflection on the life and work of John Calvin, who had an interesting and difficult story when it comes to his calling.
Uplifting Poems for Happier Psalms
Psalm 19—The Word In The Wind. This is a poem about the sheer abundance of the glory of God manifest in his creation. If we miss it, it might not be because it isn’t there but because we are “always elsewhere.”
Psalm 1—The Infinite Tree. As Psalm one is the gateway to the Psalter, so this poem is the door to the Darkling Psalter. It is about the Tree of Life and the creative calling in general.
Psalm 8—Thistledown the Wind Has Taken. The thing about being human is that there is so much glory and so much that falls short. We are “long and weary marionettes, betrothed of hope and harlot to the mirror’s glances.”
Psalm 130—A Treasure You Must Destroy To See. This is one of the poem’s about marriage and asks the question “Until you find your quiet, how can you hear consolations in the stillness?”
Dark Poems for Difficult Psalms
Psalm 137—The Vulture Sky. A poem about dealing with suffering for the Psalm about dashing Babylonian babies against the rocks. The notes on this Psalm deal with what to do with the “nasty” Psalms.
Psalm 88—Panicseed Sprouted Everywhere. This is a poem about panic attacks and fear and overwhelming seasons of life coming upon you unwelcome and unexpected. It is paired with the Psalm that ends with “darkness is my only friend.”
Psalm 14—The Food That Is Eaten In Dreams. You’ll want to read the notes for 14 and 53. The poems are highly allusive and the notes on the poems can help you find your way through them.
Psalm 53—Two Coins For The Ferryman. Because Psalm 14 is the same Psalm as 53, the poems for each are paired. They follow the same structure and consider similar difficult topics.
Moody Poems for Times When Both the Future and the Past Are Full of Fear
Psalm 51—Gather Me Together, Lord, If You Are There. This poem is paired with David’s confession Psalm and features a character who believes himself to have become “a man of strings pushing through a hedge without end: stranded, strangled, and caught.”
Psalm 142—Be Still Or Be Scattered. In this poem a character is lost on a glacier as a metaphor for being lost in life. His only comfort is the fact that God, who is the “fear he fled” has “known this place.”
Psalm 86—The Years You Were Always Elsewhere. Psalm 86, like Psalms 142 and 34, uses metaphors of water to describe a certain state of being. Here are character tries everything he can to make a desperate change only to find it is too late.
Psalm 34—Listen For The Sound Of Water On Rocks. This one is set in the world of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. In it a father worries for his daughter and wishes her the best
Poems That Deal With Pain, Death, and Being Lost
Psalm 107—Chrysalis and Crucifixion. Psalm 107 is really four poems in one (just like the Psalm). In each part of the poem, a character comes to the brink and meets God in their darkest moment.
Psalm 42—Where Light From Light Is Separated. This is another one that considers marriage and uses the experience of being separated in a cathedral to think about death.
Posts about Interviews and Lectures On Similar Topics
An Interview With the Poet Scott Cairns on His Poetic Process.
Life, Death, and the Meaning of Time: A Journey Through T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Questions About the Project
How Do I Translate the Psalms
Are these translations? Yes and no. Each time I create a rendition of a particular Psalm I am doing it with the Hebrew in front of me, using a tool called StepBible. StepBible is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to scratch beneath the surface of the English translations to see what the Hebrew turns up.
It lets you find the meanings and associations with each word of the Bible, see how many times it is used in the rest of Scripture, and trace the contexts for those other usages. It can help round out your sense of the meanings of things and unearth hidden gems present in the Hebrew but obscured in the English.
The Bible is its own best reference. When you survey the breadth of the way a word is used, you can begin to get a sense of what it means. Then you come back to the passage you are trying to translate, carrying your newly-found sense of the words with you and see what you can make of it. When you do this work in dialogue with the other major translations and scholarship on the passage, you can begin a playful exploration of a new dimension of the word of God that would have been previously closed to you.
What is a Rendition, Anyway?
Throughout this project, I have been calling these translations “renditions” as much as possible because in places I am taking a lot of poetic license with the Hebrew in order to convey certain meanings.
These renditions are not unlike Eugene Peterson’s paraphrasing of the Bible The Message, but they hew closer to the original language of the Psalms and weave in major biblical themes as they surface in the theology of the psalter.
I am making a new creation that grows like a seed out of the soil of the original Hebrew. It bears a resemblance to the source out of which it grew, but also has striking differences—and it is, hopefully, beautiful in its own right.
Read more from Andy on Still Point (reflections on deconstruction and why people leave Christianity) and Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God).
Support the Project
Any work of sufficient length is only sustained contact with by those who benefit from it.
An idea can be a fragile thing and 150 poems and translations is a big idea. I meant this project to be ambitious though and, if it is ever complete, it will be the work of years.
I know the only way I’m ever going to finish this project is if I know people read, value, and support it. Whether you subscribe or not, if you like a poem or find a rendition of a Psalm helpful, drop me a line or leave a comment and let me know.
Sometimes I try to consider which Psalms are my "favorites" before I catch myself with a reminder that thinking that way isn't super helpful. The way you've grouped them above speaks to that, I think, that the Psalms hit a lot of notes and will speak to us in different times and different ways.
This is a good summary of the project: "When you do this work in dialogue with the other major translations and scholarship on the passage, you can begin a playful exploration of a new dimension of the word of God that would have been previously closed to you." - I've enjoyed and am enjoying the playful exploration!
Is there any way to get a printed or ebook compilation of just the poems?