New Releases by Rainer Maria Rilke

"An inspirational collection of poetry, based on the Book of Hours - psalms and prayers for various times throughout the day - used by monks, offers prayers and songs that address such concerns as spirituality in the modern age and the sufferings of war, poverty, and disease."--The publisher

An anthology of Rilke''s strongest poetry and prose for both aficionados and new readers. Here is a mini-anthology of poetry and prose for both aficionados and those readers discovering Rainer Maria Rilke for the first time. John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke''s strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke''s profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses. Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke''s reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.

The first English translation of two stories from Rilke''s earliest prose work.

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke''s Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot''s The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke''s enduring masterpiece. Book jacket.

The "Duino Elegies "are the culmination of the development of Rilke''s poetry. A summary of his spiritual troubles, perhaps no volume of poems in a European language has made so dramatic and sustained an impact on English-speaking readers in this century.

Rilke''s association with Rodin in 1902 inspired in him a new poetic method. ''Somehow, '' he wrote, ''I too must come to make things... realities that emerge from handiwork. Somehow I too must discover the smallest basic element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of representation for everything.'' Until this work, Rilke''s voice had come from the interior, expressing feelings and moods. New Poems represented a turning point, an intoxication with the materiality of the world.

Rilke''s move to Paris in 1902 and his close association with Rodin led him in a new direction in his poetry. between 1906 and 1908 he produced a torrent of brilliant work that he published in two volumes under the title ''New Poem.''

For poetry lovers and students of literature and literary criticism, Robert Bly, the National Book Award-winning poet, brings his prowess as a translator and critic to bear on the work of one of the major German poets of the century.

In this collection of excerpts from his essays, notebooks, and letters, pre-eminent modern poet Rainer Maria Rilke meditates on subjects as varied as a dolls, walking among trees, and the great sculptor Rodin. Where Silence Reigns, a sampling from his essays, notebooks, and letters, shows Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the pre-eminent modern poet of solitude and inwardness, seeking to reconcile his personal conflict between the claims of "life" and the claims of art. His subjects are commonplace, seemingly innocuous at times: the encounter between a man and a dog, a collection of dolls, a walk among trees. But always the deceptively simple external phenomenon is seen as the symbol, the catalyst of an intensely felt inner experience. As he confided to his friend Frau Wunderly-Volkart: "Oh, how often one longs to speak a few degrees more deeply! My prose... lies deeper... but one gets only a minimal layer further down; one’s left with a mere intimation of the kind of speech that may be possible THERE where silence reigns." In addition to occasional pieces and notebook entries, this volume contains selections from the strange and haunting "Dream-Book," the lyrical "Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke," and the entire "Rodin-Book"––Rilke’s appreciation of the great sculptor whom he had served as secretary.

Rilke’s Book of Hours falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Although these poems were the work of Rilke’s youth, they contain the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, they celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe, but seems to be rather humanity itself, and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. This exquisite gift edition contains Babette Deutsch’s classic translations, which capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, allowing interpretations both religious and philosophical, and transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.

This representative selection from Rilke''s large and extraordinary correspondence provides a kind of spiritual autobiography of the poet. The period here covered reflects all the great experiences of Rilke''s early adult life: his difficult beginnings, his relationships with Lou Andreas-Salome and with his wife Clara, his two journeys to Russia, his contact with the Worpswede artists, the influence of Paris, the revelation of Cezanne. Many of the letters are psychologically revealing; many touch upon characteristic themes, or freshly transcribe experience that sooner or later passes into the poetry.

Written with astonishing rapidity in two weeks of February 1922, Sonnets to Orpheus is a series of fifty-five brilliant and affirmative songs.