A wonderful translation by Ariel and Chana Bloch. The translation infuses the poem with sensuality and emotion. Creating a direct immediacy of sights, sounds, and sensations, the reader is taken into the real world. Gone are the verbal acrobatics and puritanical mistranslations. A short poem of monumental beauty. ( )

This beautifully crafted book is a collaboration between a scholar of both classical Arabic and Hebrew and a poet who has also previously translated several volumes of Hebrew poetry. The result is an authoritative translation that allows the poetry to sing in English as it does in Hebrew. The book begins with an accessible introduction that establishes the context and date of the poem as well as the history of its incorporation into the canon of Hebrew Scripture and its translation and interpretation in Jewish and Christian traditions. The translation and the Hebrew text are printed on facing pages, followed by Robert Alter's Afterword and an extensive commentary accessible to laypersons as well as scholars, to readers who know Hebrew as well as those who don't. Whether the Song of Songs qualifies as the world's first great love poem is a matter for debate-Sappho's poetry predates its canonical form by several centuries-but, even where its priority is in question, this new translation leaves little room for doubt as to its greatness and its passion.