Originally published as four clothbound editions (The Roses and The Windows, The Astonishment of Origins, Orchards, and The Migration of Powers), this large paperback brings together all of Rilke's French poems, as well as his hitherto unpublished Dedications and Fragments, in an exquisite English translation by A. Poulin, Jr.

Before Poulin's important efforts, it wasn't widely known that Rilke―often deemed one of modernity's finest writers for his work in German―also wrote over 400 poems in French. These lyrics were composed toward the end of Rilke's life, after he had produced his masterworks, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet the French poems are entirely of a piece with Rilke's characteristic themes, subjects, moods, and images. As Poulin notes in his Preface to The Complete French Poems: "The French lyrics [are] small poems of careful attentiveness to the things of this world [and] to the elusive states of being in which the world is poetically transformed."

About the Author

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875 and traveled throughout Europe for much of his adult life, returning frequently to Paris. There he came under the influence of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and produced much of his finest verse, most notably the two volumes of New Poems as well as the great modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Among his other books of poems are The Book of Images and The Book of Hours. He lived the last years of his life in Switzerland, where he completed his two poetic masterworks, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia in December 1926.

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