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.
Reading & Writing
Joseph Duemer's blog about reading, writing, politics, birds, food, & weather
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.
I wish Rilke had done more “harm” to American poetry.
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.
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