Thank you for this, Paul! I need more poetry in my life and I appreciate your pointing me to these gems. Rilke has a poetry collection, Book of Hours, which a family member once bought me when I asked for a breviary for Christmas. It was the best gift mistake ever — I perennially return to Rilke and am never disappointed.
Thanks Rand! Wow. I don't know Rilke very well, so I appreciate this introduction. I always feel like a personal recommendation like this is massively helpful in helping me jump into a poem -- especially one that I know is well-known, a "classic," etc. I just googled a few poems, and I'm into it. Especially the poems that capture a season or some particular phenomenon (like "Before Summer Rain," or this one, about the coming of fall: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50937/day-in-autumn). I like the religious stuff, too, and am intrigued by the way the author of R's bio on the Poetry Foundation's website describes his relation to the Christian tradition. Do you have the Anita Borrows translation of "Book of Hours"? And any favorite poems we could use as a starting point from that book?
Thank you for this, Paul! I need more poetry in my life and I appreciate your pointing me to these gems. Rilke has a poetry collection, Book of Hours, which a family member once bought me when I asked for a breviary for Christmas. It was the best gift mistake ever — I perennially return to Rilke and am never disappointed.
Thanks Rand! Wow. I don't know Rilke very well, so I appreciate this introduction. I always feel like a personal recommendation like this is massively helpful in helping me jump into a poem -- especially one that I know is well-known, a "classic," etc. I just googled a few poems, and I'm into it. Especially the poems that capture a season or some particular phenomenon (like "Before Summer Rain," or this one, about the coming of fall: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50937/day-in-autumn). I like the religious stuff, too, and am intrigued by the way the author of R's bio on the Poetry Foundation's website describes his relation to the Christian tradition. Do you have the Anita Borrows translation of "Book of Hours"? And any favorite poems we could use as a starting point from that book?