The Poetry of Rilke

Starred review from September 21, 2009
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.”