The poems in Exo­dus are mod­ern midrashim: re-inter­pre­ta­tions and psy­cho­log­i­cal explo­rations of the peo­ple and events in the Bible. A cen­tral metaphor is the exo­dus from Egypt, which rep­re­sents all the jour­neys that peo­ple make: try­ing new expe­ri­ences, leav­ing a bad rela­tion­ship, find­ing a new job, tak­ing risks. Many of the poems are dra­mat­ic mono­logues from the per­spec­tive of a char­ac­ter in the Jew­ish Scriptures.