Rilke’s Birthday

Posted on December 4, 2007
Filed Under Poetry, Reading |

There was a period in my life — my late thirties — when I poured obsessively over Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus & Duino Elegies. I even got a German dictionary & worked word-by-word through some of the sonnets. I collected different translations. Dana Gioia (now Commissar of the NEA, but then just an aparatchik on the make) once said that Rilke had done more harm to American poetry than any other poet he could think of. Or words to that effect. As far as I know, Gioia wasn’t talking about me specifically, but he might as well have been. Gioia, a poet of suburban sensibilities, certainly would not approve Rilke’s intensities. We are more fortunate than the angels, because we mostly escape the menace of purity.

Comments

4 Responses to “Rilke’s Birthday”

  1. M.Cunningham on December 4th, 2007 4:01 pm

    Thanks for this terrific post about Rilke.

    Do you know about LOST SON, the new novel based on Rilke’s life and work? It’s available in bookstores and libraries everywhere. More at: http://www.mallencunningham.com

    Cheers.

  2. Jonathan Mayhew on December 4th, 2007 5:14 pm

    I wish Rilke had done more “harm” to American poetry.

  3. Peter on December 4th, 2007 5:42 pm

    NARRATIVE

    Stopped cold by the colors of all things
    I didn’t notice the ground the air
    their emergence presupposed at first
    the mirror itself’s self-sacrifice

    which becomes an obstacle to love
    to getting past that system of silvery
    darkness no light escapes

    as when I gather my shadow about me
    on the wall I know the sun backs
    me up with this and supports and
    nudges me slowly forward to loom

    larger than life and to merge with it
    since narrative is inescapable
    and not even poetry can escape it.

  4. edward mycue on December 7th, 2007 12:01 am

    you have to look at the site of helen sventitsky-rother at http://www.bigstarlet.wordpress.com
    her songs, poems, ideas, raves, rants and ‘outright beatings’ are quite something and come from the high desert in nevada. ed mycue