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The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke | Rainer Maria Rilke
14 posts | 16 read | 7 to read
Rilke's poems, in the original German and English translation, show his concern with romantic transformations and spiritual quests
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TheSpineView
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merelybookish Love Rilke! 3y
Desha Rilke...♥️♥️♥️ 3y
41 likes2 comments
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LiterRohde
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“The Seer”

“I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say things I can't bear without a friend, I can't love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on across the woods and across time, and the world looks as if it had no age: the landscape, like a line in the psalm book, is seriousness and weight and eternity. 👇

LiterRohde What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great. If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names. 👇 (edited) 5y
LiterRohde When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestlers' sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. 👇 (edited) 5y
LiterRohde Whoever was beaten by this Angel (who often simply declined the fight) went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.”

#PoetryMatters | 13: #Wise

📷: Made with Typorama
(edited) 5y
See All 9 Comments
Butterfinger I think I will read this to my students. I found it very motivating. 5y
LiterRohde @Butterfinger I love the poetry of Rilke. (edited) 5y
TheSpineView Rilke!💜💜💜 5y
Desha Rilke! I just posted a picture of my Everyman‘s pocket edition of Rilke...I have other volumes of his work but the smaller Everyman‘s is so much easier to carry around. Thanks for posting! 👍🏻 4y
LiterRohde I have quite a few posts based on his poems and letters. 4y
LiterRohde @Desha I have quite a few posts based on his poems and letters. 4y
45 likes9 comments
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LiterRohde
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“For Hans Carossa”

“Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation. When something‘s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.”

#PoetryMatters | 11: #Circle

📷: Made with Typorama

TheSpineView Lovely! 😍😍😍 5y
slategreyskies I still remember the first time I held a book of Rilke‘s poetry. I was taking a poetry class at the university, and my professor had a book of Rilke‘s poems sitting next to him on the table. I was waiting my turn to converse with him. I don‘t know what made me pick up his book & open it, but I did. It drew me in, and I asked him if I could borrow it. I caught him off-guard. He was so startled he said yes. I read while walking back to my car. 5y
slategreyskies It was January—- so that volume of poems always reminds of cold air and narrow sidewalks—- When he lent me that book, it felt like he‘d given me a box of treasure... such a great gift. 5y
47 likes4 comments
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LiterRohde
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“Music”

“What play you, O Boy? Through the garden it stole Like wandering steps, like a whisper - then mute;
What play you, O Boy? Lo! your gypsying soul Is caught and held fast in the pipes of Pan's flute.”

#PoetryMatters | 9: #Hooked

📷: Made with Typorama

Velvetfur 'your gypsying soul' - what a great line! ❤️ 5y
TheSpineView 💜💜💜 5y
52 likes2 comments
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LiterRohde
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“The Swan”

“This laboring of ours with all that remains undone, as if still bound to it, is like the lumbering gait of the swan.” 👇

#PoetryMatters | 7: #Wave

📷: Made with Typorama

LiterRohde “And then our dying - releasing ourselves from the very ground on which we stood - is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself into the water. It gently receives him, and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him, as wave follows wave, while he, now wholly serene and sure, with regal composure, allows himself to glide.” (edited) 5y
TheSpineView Lovely! 💜💜💜 5y
46 likes2 comments
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LiterRohde
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From “Impermanence”

“Driftsand of the hours. Quietly disappearing, continuously, even the happily consecrated design. Life blows away, always: pillars already rise without connection, carrying nothing but empty air.”

📙: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/veratrum_6-5-11.html

#PoetryMatters | 5: #Sand

📷: Made with Typorama

TheSpineView 😍😍😍 5y
48 likes1 comment
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LiterRohde
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From “Spring”

“Spring has come back again. The Earth is like a child that‘s got poems by heart; so many poems, so many verses, patient toil winning her prizes at last.”

📙: https://favoritepoems.diehoren.com/2016/04/spring-has-come-back-again.html?m=1

#PoetryMatters | 4: #Earth

📷: Made with Typorama

TheSpineView 😍😍😍 5y
43 likes1 comment
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LiterRohde
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“Fall”

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space. Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no." And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We're all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It's in them all. And yet there‘s Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

#PoetryMatters | 3: #Calm

?: Made w Typorama

SharonGoforth Lovely!🍂🍁 5y
TheSpineView Love it!😍😍😍 5y
Desha This is one of my favorites of his 📚 4y
51 likes3 comments
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LiterRohde
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From “Pushing Through”

“It‘s possible I am pushing through solid rock in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone; I am such a long way in I see no way through, and no space: everything is close to my face, and everything close to my face is stone.”

📙: http://www.slowmuse.com/2007/05/01/rilke-pushing-through/

#PoetryMatters | 2: #Stone

📷: Made with Typorama

TheSpineView 😍😍😍 5y
45 likes1 comment
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LiterRohde
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From “The Apple Orchard”

“Thus must it be, when willingly you strive throughout a long and uncomplaining life, committed to one goal: to give yourself! And silently to grow and to bear fruit.”

📙: https://m.poemhunter.com/poem/the-apple-orchard/

#PoetryMatters | 19: #Seed

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TheSpineView 😊 5y
68 likes1 comment
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readordierachel
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I'm a day late, but this is a #favorite of mine by Rainer Maria Rilke. So much force in this one.

#poetrymatters @LazyDays

LazyDays 💓 6y
Tanisha_A Whoa! Powerful indeed! 6y
vivastory Rilke is top ten poets of all time. I've reread Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus more than nearly any other collections. 6y
readordierachel @vivastory Love him. I've only read around in the Selected Poems, but I think both of those are included so I'll have to do a deeper dive soon! 6y
82 likes2 stack adds5 comments
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GoneFishing

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

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