Rilke, from the Book of Hours to Orpheus

Rilke wrote these prayers in the voice of a young monk addressing a God who is still being made. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy’s translation, with the German on facing pages, reads them as love poems to that God.

Rilke’s second major collection gathers lyrics written between 1899 and 1906, including “Autumn Day” and “Childhood,” full of evenings, seasons and solitary figures. Edward Snow’s revised bilingual edition adds poems not translated before.

Robert Bly selects poems from across Rilke’s career and introduces each period with his own commentary, a guided first look for a reader deciding which of the books to read in full.

Rilke began the ten Duino Elegies in 1912 at a castle on the Adriatic and finished them in a burst in February 1922. David Young’s translation, with the German on facing pages, follows their questions about angels, death and what human lives are for.

Rilke wrote these fifty-five sonnets in a few weeks of February 1922 as a memorial for a young dancer who had died. Christiane Marks, the first native German speaker to translate the whole sequence, gives Orpheus and his song a close English reading.