For the past twenty-five years, North Point Press has been working with Edward Snow, “Rilke’s best contemporary translator” (Brian Phillips, The New Republic), to bring into English Rilke’s major poetic works. The Poetry of Rilke—the single most comprehensive volume of Rilke’s German poetry ever to be published in English—is the culmination of this effort. With more than two hundred and fifty selected poems by Rilke, including complete translations of the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies, The Poetry of Rilke spans the arc of Rilke’s work, from the breakthrough poems of The Book of Hours to the visionary masterpieces written only weeks before his death. This landmark bilingual edition also contains all of Snow’s commentaries on Rilke, as well as an important new introduction by the award-winning poet Adam Zagajewski. The Poetry of Rilke will stand as the authoritative single-volume translation of Rilke into English for years to come.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Snow, a professor at Rice, has devoted a good deal of his life to bringing into fluid, lyrical English more of Rilke's books than anyone else. He is Rilke's best contemporary ambassador to the English-speaking world. Rilke, of course, is one of the major poets of the 20th century, author of such famous poems as Archaic Torso of Apollo, The Panther and The Duino Elegies. Snow's translations of the complete texts of Rilke's original collections—including both volumes of New Poems, The Book of Images, Duino Elegies and the revelatory Uncollected Poems—are beautiful works in their own right and bring across all of Rilke's intensity and focus. This mammoth book brings together generous selections from all of Snow's volumes of Rilke in their recently revised editions; it's certain to be the definitive collection of Rilke for some time to come. Readers will be helpless, after passing through this book, against the command that closes Archaic Torso: You must change your life. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for Rainer Maria Rilke and Edward Snow
“Edward Snow is doing important work. Robert Lowell once wrote that it was hard to imagine Rilke first written in English, that the poems were sealed in German. Snow is unsealing them.”—Robert Phillips, Houston Chronicle
Praise for the Duino Elegies
“[This] translation of the Elegies is the finest that I have ever read . . . Snow has gradually been building a reputation as Rilke’s best contemporary translator in English. His version of the Elegies should cement that reputation, and elevate it: Snow may be the best translator that Rilke has ever had.”—Brian Phillips, The New Republic
Praise for The Book of Images
“Snow has rendered with great skill and accuracy a work both familiar and unknown, more complicated and more immediate than many have suspected, at once grave, mysterious, and beautiful.”—Edward Hirsch
“With these sorrowing and luminous poems . . . it is possible to gain, for the first time in English, a consistent perspective of Rilke’s difficult canon, here restored and disclosed to stunning effect.”—Richard Howard
Praise for Uncollected Poems
“Something of the non-vatic Rilke, poet of perception and sensation, is best conveyed in English by Snow’s mediations.”—Harold Bloom
“The Snow translation of these little-known Rilke poems is brilliant.”—Mark Strand
Praise for New Poems
“Rilke’s first great work . . . [Snow’s translation] is clear, accurate, and fluent.”—Stephen Mitchell
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Wait for the paperback...,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Poetry of Rilke: Bilingual Edition (Hardcover)
I agree with Mr. Horne's review of the quality of this book. The boards are cheap and thin, with no cloth. The paper is thin and cheap enough to yellow as quickly as a paperback. The cut of paper on the top of my book is uneven (though this is, most likely, a flaw peculiar to my copy).
Snow's translations of Rilke are some of the best. It's a shame that North Point Press brought them out in such a shoddy edition. Users that don't own Snow's previous translations might find this a great single volume for Rilke. However, they would be advised to wait for the paperback, due to the poor quality of this pressing. Or, if interested in hardbacks, they might want to purchase the individual originals, second hand. Though the translations of the Elegies are nearly recomposed in this volume, I can hardly think that Snow would discredit his earlier versions of the Elegies (or any of his other complete translations of Rilke's books of poetry).
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful Work Masterfully Rendered,
This review is from: The Poetry of Rilke: Bilingual Edition (Hardcover)
It's hard to think of any 20th century poet more worthy of intense study and close reading than Rainer Maria Rilke, whose demanding, and often hermetic work requires (and has not always received) sensitive and skilled translations. Rilke's ideal translator needs to inhabit his works--and to have more than a "touch of the poet" him/herself.
Edward Snow might feel more comfortable--as I've read--being described as an academic than a poet, but his deft, lyrical translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry have won him almost universal acclaim in recent years. He is justly revered as one of Rilke's best English language translators ever. Thus it's a real joy to have an extensive collected works edition of these skillfully rendered translations, featuring many previously uncollected poems and new versions of several he has included in previous individual volumes. I note that several customers have been less than thrilled with the physical item, and I too have been distressed in recent years with various publishing short cuts and downright shoddy product. I feel compelled to rate this work of literature as a work of literature, however. I might advise those who have concerns about the quality of the physical item to examine it in an actual brick and mortar (and if satisfied, then consider ordering it online if that's your preference). Sometimes that's the only way of alleviating online anxiety about an actual purchase.
31 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Poetry of Rilke, Trans. & Edted by Edwrd Snow,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Poetry of Rilke: Bilingual Edition (Hardcover)
This review addresses the actual book. Given the competition from electronic books, the internet, free downloads, paperbacks, you'd think publishers of VERY EXPENSIVE hardcover editions would go all out to produce a beautiful edition. Instead, they give you cheap cardboard covers that will dim in a year, paper that turns brown in two, and bindings that begin to crack in three. Oh, and they charge you $50 for one book. I am very disappointed that Northpoint Press could not have produced a beautiful volume that I would treasure rather than a cheap edition, cheaper than the old book club editions of yesteryear, that will deteriorate. Where is their pride? And how can they compete? My volume from another publisher of Ginsberg's collected poems is already filled with brown pages.
I have both Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies from the same publisher and the binding is at one-third cloth. All I can say to publishers is--if you want me to spend fifty bucks, then I expect a quality edition or I will eschew buying further volumes. I am sure I'm not the only reader who feels this way. Remember, ONE VOICE SPEAKS FOR TEN THOUSAND!
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