Complete French Poems

Originallly 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and The Migration of Powers this large paperback brings together all of Rilkes French poems as well as his hitherto unpublished Dedications and Fragments in an exquisite English translation by A. Poulin Jr. Before Poulins important efforts it wasnt widely known that Rilke—often deemed one of modernitys finest writers for his work in German—also wrote over 400 poems in French. These lyrics were composed toward the end of Rilkes life after he had produced his masterworks The Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet the French poems are entirely of a piece with Rilkes 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.