Rating: 
Summary: Every angel is terrifying
Review: I've read a few books of Rilke's poetry, but this is the one that made me love his work. I've compared Mitchell's translations with several others, including William H. Gass's recent "Reading Rilke" and no other translation comes close to Mitchell's in finding the power in Rilke's words. This is a book anyone with ANY interest in poetry must have.
Rating:
Summary: By far the best Rilke translation into English
Review: One defintion of poetry is that it is untranslatable. This volume is, i think, sufficient proof that that is nonsense. One has, perhaps, the sense that one is hearing an ecstatic music through a partition, with one's ear pressed, so to speak, to the wall; but one is hearing the music nonetheless. It seems to me that, along with Proust and only a few others, Rilke is one of the few modern writers with a genuinely philosophical intelligence. Indeed, if one wanted a way into Heidegger, one could do worse than begin by a serious reading of the poetry and prose of Rilke, esp. his poetics of the "Thing" and of the "Open". Auden called Rilke the "Santa Claus of Loneliness". This is rather too disparaging. The correct designation, i think, would be a terrible lonely elation - something which connects him to that other Prague born writer, Franz Kafka. Rilke is, among other things, a secular mystic who rams language up against the wall of the inexpressible. Give me Proust, Rilke and Kafka for my desert island and i'll be content (so long, of course, as i have a constant supply of freshly ground coffee.)
Rating:
Summary: My favorite collection of Rilke's verse in English
Review: Over the years I have owned and read a number of translations of Rilke's verse. I find this superb volume translated by Stephen Mitchell to be both the best selection of his poetry and the finest translation. Take nearly any of the poems in this volume and set it beside a competing translation, and the Mitchell version is both more poetic and more in keeping with the spirit of Rilke. This volume collections all of the Duino Elegies, and generous portions of the various collections, including a fair number of the Sonnets to Orpheus. For most, this will be the only edition of Rilke's verse that they will need. These are some great, great poems. Apart from the Duino Elegies, I believe my favorites would include the amazing "Archaic Torso of Apollo," in which the poet becomes so entranced studying the statue that it proclaims to him in closing, "You must change your life." "The Panther" is without any question one of the most haunting poems of the twentieth century, with its building sense of some great revelation, only to end with the expected image plunging into the heart and disappearing. My favorite poem in the collection, however, may be one from the UNCOLLECTED POEMS, the amazing "You Who Never Arrived," in which the poet muses on all the occasions upon which he and his beloved never met (Rilke's belief was that we are destined never to meet our true love), but nevertheless perhaps came tantalizing close. For instance, he walks into a shop from which she has just left, where the "mirrors are still dizzy with your presence." He ends his musings, "Who knows? perhaps the same/bird echoed through both of us/yesterday, separate, in the evening . . . " This is an essential volume for any lover of great poetry. I can't recommend this highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite collection of Rilke's verse in English
Review: Over the years I have owned and read a number of translations of Rilke's verse. I find this superb volume translated by Stephen Mitchell to be both the best selection of his poetry and the finest translation. Take nearly any of the poems in this volume and set it beside a competing translation, and the Mitchell version is both more poetic and more in keeping with the spirit of Rilke. This volume collections all of the Duino Elegies, and generous portions of the various collections, including a fair number of the Sonnets to Orpheus. For most, this will be the only edition of Rilke's verse that they will need. These are some great, great poems. Apart from the Duino Elegies, I believe my favorites would include the amazing "Archaic Torso of Apollo," in which the poet becomes so entranced studying the statue that it proclaims to him in closing, "You must change your life." "The Panther" is without any question one of the most haunting poems of the twentieth century, with its building sense of some great revelation, only to end with the expected image plunging into the heart and disappearing. My favorite poem in the collection, however, may be one from the UNCOLLECTED POEMS, the amazing "You Who Never Arrived," in which the poet muses on all the occasions upon which he and his beloved never met (Rilke's belief was that we are destined never to meet our true love), but nevertheless perhaps came tantalizing close. For instance, he walks into a shop from which she has just left, where the "mirrors are still dizzy with your presence." He ends his musings, "Who knows? perhaps the same/bird echoed through both of us/yesterday, separate, in the evening . . . " This is an essential volume for any lover of great poetry. I can't recommend this highly enough.
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