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Distributed for Oberlin College Press

The Book of Fresh Beginnings

Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

This new selection, drawing primarily on Rilke’s extremely rich middle period, the first decade of the 20th Century, and concluding with a selection from his late Sonnets to Orpheus, offers a clear, powerful, and contemporary Rilke.

108 pages | 6 1/2 x 9 3/4 | © 1994

Poetry


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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION • FROM THE BOOK OF PICTURES (1902, 1906) • Entrance • The Angels • Childhood • From a Childhood • People by Night • Evening • Loneliness • Fall Day • The Voices: Nine Pages with a Titlepage • Titlepage • The Beggar’s Song • The Blindman’s Song • The Drinker’s Song • The Suicide’s Song • The Widow’s Song • The Idiot’s Song • The Orphan’s Song • The Dwarf’s Song • The Leper’s Song • FROM NEW POEMS (1907, 1908) • Lovesong • The Panther • Saint Sebastian • The Angel • The Swan • Death-Experience • Blue Hydrangeas • Portrait of my Father in his Youth • The Carousel • Spanish Dancer • Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes • The Bowl of Roses • Archaic Torso of Apollo • Fading • Venice in Late Autumn • The Flamingos • Buddha in Glory • REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND (1908) • Requiem for a Friend • FROM SONNETS TO ORPHEUS (1923) • “A tree stood up” (I, 1) • “From the joined happiness of song and lyre” (I, 2) • “A god can do it” (I, 3) • “Don’t lay a stone to his memory” (I, 5) • “Is he of this world?” (I, 6) • “You’ve never been away from me” (I, 10) • “Wait... that tastes good” (I, 15) • “But what can I dedicate to you” (I, 20) • “But you now, whom I felt like a flower” (I, 25) • “Breathing, you invisible poem!” (II, 1) • “Mirrors” (II, 3) • “Oh this is the animal that never was” (II, 4) • “Flower-muscle” (II, 5) • “Rose, growing throne of yourself” (II, 6) • “Flowers, kinfolk at last” (II, 7) • “Be ahead of all partings” (II, 13) • “Look at the flowers” (II, 14) • “Oh fountain-mouth” (II, 15) • “Listen” (II, 25) • “Silent friend of many distances” (II, 29) • NOTES

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