A new selection of poems and prose by the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, set with the original text and a facing page translation, and including more than a dozen works that have never before appeared in English. The translations, by the NEA and PEN-award-winning author and translator Damion Searls, are lively, moving, and appealing, and they give a new voice for Rilke in English: mystical but concrete.
Searls' selection of texts revolves around related images and ideas--birds and trees, giving and receiving, working and waiting, girlhood and gardens--and presents a coherent vision of how we relate to the outer world and inner world of the imagination. Great for scholars and students and the perfect introduction for those just getting to know this master poet.