Uncollected Poems

Between the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 and his death in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke published only two major volumes of poetry - the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, both in 1923. But during this period he wrote poetry continually, often prolifically - in letters, in guest books, in presentation copies, and chiefly in the pocket-books he always carried with him. The body of this uncollected work in German exceeds five hundred pieces, a remarkable number of which must be counted among Rilke's finest poems. They range from finished poems of great poise and brilliance, to headlong statements that hurtle through their subjects, to hauntingly self-contained "fragments, " to short bursts that arc into the unpursuable. Together they share a nakedness and an immediacy of voice that make them feel uncannily contemporary and draw the reader close. Edward Snow's selection of more than a hundred of these little-known and neglected poems - the first edition of such scope for the general reader - distills the best of the uncollected poems while offering a wide enough choice to convey Rilke's variety and industry during the years he wrote them.