Sonnets to Orpheus

2025 Indie Book Awards Finalist | PoetryRilke's voice from the last tumultuous young century reaches tenderly into ours. But his lush German is a language of its own. Mark Burrows has a rare gift to coax it faithfully into English. I am delighted, and so very grateful for this book.Krista Tippett, host ofOn BeingOn the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of Rilkes Sonnets to Orpheus,award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation.This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke's poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems dazzling obscurity, refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilkes formulations present. The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them.