Rainer Maria Rilke is arguably the most important modern German-language poet. His New Poems, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus are pillars of 20th-century poetry. Yet his earlier verse is less known. The Book of Hours, written in three bursts between 1899 and 1903, is Rilke's most formative wor[...]

This is a mini-anthology of Rilke's poetry and prose for both aficionados and newcomers. Combining great passion and gentle care, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but explicitly sexual as well. Others reflect perennial themes in Rilke's work - death and life, growth and tr[...]

A special anniversary edition featuring the complete English and German texts, this 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 [...]

First published in 1910, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reac[...]

For poetry lovers and students of literature and literary criticism, a 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.[...]

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. T[...]

This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced, (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.From the Trade Paperback edition.[...]

There are important letters here to Muzot, Lou Andreas-Salome, to Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis Hohenlohe, and many others. The most significant of the Wartime Letters: 1914-1921 are also included. An Introduction briefly traces the development of Rilke's work during these years; the Notes provi[...]

We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of[...]

In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters--an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind [...]

Written with astonishing rapidity in two weeks of February 1922, when Rilke was finally completing the Duino Elegies that had occupied him intermittently for a decade, Sonnets to Orpheus is a series of fifty-five brilliant and affirmative songs. It is in a sense a spontaneous creative dividend gener[...]