A Psalter for those who live in the last third of the twentieth century has to be more than a collection of pretty hymns. It has to be a collection of cries that help to express our anguish, our embarrassment at being human, and our sense of awe at both the glory and the grimness of human life.

Ernesto Cardenal is a Nicaraguan poet who understands what the Psalms are and what they mean to this generation…. [His] rendition of the Psalms [Psalms of Struggle] is not the work of a contemplative but of a man who is deeply involved in the affairs of this world. It is the work of one who knows the meaning of words like police brutality, concentration camps, mafia and terror, and who knows these words not only from books but from his own personal experience.

The reader's first reaction to these renditions...