The Quiet Storms of Rainer Maria Rilke: 36 Poems

Rilke’s quiet poems contain exceptional pent-up energy that encompasses the immediacy, wonder, and breathlessness with which the poet experienced life. His unique, spiritual connection with the world, so easily lost in a formal or literal translation, is opened up in these fresh interpretations from Terrance Lane Millet. The English versions of Rilke’s poems are very loose translations from the German. An epiphany-like view of the world and the elements in it, more than the form of the poems themselves, seems to be the essence of Rilke. The poet is laid bare, and Millet’s fresh use of convention reveals Rilke’s openness to the mystery of experience. The poems in this collection explore Rilke’s sense that out of darkness may come light and wonder; from turbulence, peace and integration; and that understanding can come through embracing what we do not understand. A certain, indefinable something hovers just out of eyeshot, as the things we fear may be little more than unexplored aspects of ourselves.