Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm pleased to have as my guest, Robert Pinsky, who's written the first book in a new series called the Jewish Encounter series.

This is The Life of David, and it's published by Shoggin

in their next book in print.

And it is both a life of David

and a reading of the books of the Bible,

Samuel 1, Samuel 2, Kings, Chronicles.

So it's both literary history and history and poetry.

It's a work of the imagination.

Now, you were given your choice, I assume, of any topic.

Why did you choose King David?

It was a brilliant suggestion by a brilliant editor named Jonathan Rosen, and I realized, in terms of your theme song, of all the human animals, this is the one, probably of all the legends and myths and actual lives, this is the one that's done the most different things. Who else was a great artist and a great killer? It just doesn't happen.

And in addition to the books of the Bible and all the poems, there are these amazing legends.

So I discovered a marvelous work of scholarship

called The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginsburg,

containing crazy, elaborate, wonderful stories

that have built up over many centuries

...