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Fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, publishing in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke''s birth. Rilke is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, revered throughout the world. Geoffrey Lehmann has selected fifty of Rilke’s finest poems from the two volumes, entitled New Poems, that are the center of gravity of his achievement. Lehmann’s refined ear and perfect mastery of English verse form give his renderings of Rilke a precision and poise that are equal to that of the German originals. On the occasion of the hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of Rilke’s birth a master poet lives anew.
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The New Poems are for me Rilke s greatest poems, written under the shadow of mon grand ami Auguste Rodin to whom their second volume was dedicated. They are method poems. Not waiting for inspiration, but taking the handicraft of a poem, and setting himself subjects, the way a shoemaker might, or a sculptor. Thing-poems, Dinggedichte, poems about things, but also poems that are a thing. The two volumes are, in my view, two of the most beautifully made poetic sequences ever. Michael Hofmann
In Rilke not only do the stones and trees become human as they have done always and everywhere poems have been made but humans become things and nameless beings and only then gain their ultimate humanity. Robert Musil
