Poems to Night

(Based on ARC). Hard to believe this, most of this anyhow, hadn’t been translated into English until now. Started in the end of 1913, Rilke’s Poems to Night, takes the reader through familiar existential themes, pain, loneliness, longing in his simple, yet complex, style.

It’s a short read at 90-ish pages, but found myself rereading much of it a second time, jumping here and there, as this each poem collection has the commonality of night, each poem can be read alone or can be read as a small piece of the whole.

Also contains drafts of many of the poems as well as other night poems.

Well worth the read.

Poems to Night is a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke's work well worth considering, enjoying, and sharing with others. Rilke is masterful and these poems are evidence a great talent. An ideal gift for poetry lovers.

I wanted to read Rilke's poems for a while and that book was the perfect chance. I really enjoyed it. I loved the night theme and it fits perfectly for what he wrote. I felt the loneliness and melancholy through his poems. Rilke's poetry was really gorgeous and I'll continue to read more of his poems in the future.

Before this, I'd never read any collections of Rilke's work. I'd seen poems one at a time and always enjoyed them. In this collection, we get a chance to read a number of her translated poems all at once.

In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented the writer Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing twenty-two poems, meticulously copied out in his own hand, which bore the title "Poems to Night."
These have never before translated into English, this collection brings together all Rilke's significant night poems in one volume.

This work is beautiful and heartbreaking and touching. You can read this over time or all in one sitting and get something from it.

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875. He attended university in Prague and in Munich, switching majors from art history, literature and philosophy to political science, law and Darwinian theory. He published his first collection of poems in 1894. He suffered from a wonderful illness called “Fernweh” - he loved travelling. He crisscrossed the old world – from Germany to Russia and then to Spain, and from Italy to Egypt. The Great war meant that he had to join the war, and he did that as a clerk in the war archives in Vienna. During war, in 1916, Rilke gave a notebook of his poems revolving around night to his friend Rudolf Kassner. Rilke died of leukaemia in 1927, refusing all treatment and wanting to die “his own death.”

The collection “Poems to Night” offers all 22 poems from the notebook given to Kassner, but also includes sketches for poems and other completed poems with the same topic – the night.

Rilke here offers a collection of morsels for the soul. He doesn’t bother the reader with long verses, with complicated rhymes, with washed out epithets. He just gives the reader an insight into the connection a person has with their constant companion.

We have all felt the emotions he describes here, but, not being poets, we were unable to put them into words. Rilke then serves as a translator for those indescribable feelings.

He talks about love and our constant search for that something that keeps slipping from our grasp. We carry our thoughts and yearnings with us and we look for someone to offer them to, but sadly we carry them
…to the stranger, who misunderstood us,
alas to the other, whom we never found…

But even when we are feeling down and defeated, the night brings us recuperation, it sooths us and makes us stronger
When through the olive trees’ pale separation
the night made me stronger with stars…

We want to be seen and in the night, it seems like millions of stars are looking down on us, seeing us, “surveying us.” The night gives us courage to face being seen.

This whole collection of poems is the kind of book one should keep on one’s nightstand and turn to when the traffic din is down and all you can see through your window are the moon and the stars.

A wonderful book, a wonderful poet.

This felt like coming home, made me long for the warm nights of summer where it wraps around me like an old friend. This collection of RIlke's poems are beautiful, but I found myself falling in love with the draft's from this collection.
I found so many lines that felt like they were in harmony with my own soul.

I'm not terribly familiar with Rilke's work, but I enjoyed this collection focused on night, nature, and introspection. The introduction was a bit affected; in retrospect, I wish I had jumped past it to read the poems and interpret them for myself. It was also interesting to see some of Rilke's unfinished poetry toward the end of the collection.

Before reading this, I was unsure if any meaning or emotions of the poems would be lost in translation. However, the collection previewed a compelling experience from start to finish. I found myself often comparing the text to the sky as I read at night. I definitely recommend this book for versed poets and newcomers alike. It was a simple yet wonderful read, and serves as a gateway to reading other German poetry.

Name: Poems To Night
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
Genre: Poetry
Rating: 4.3/5
Review:
Poems To Night is a beautiful collection of poetries. The poetries are written mostly in Paris, some talk about the city of love, while other poetries are about reminiscence, sentiments and love. These poetries are like strings of words woven together to form an emotion, a feeling of one own self.
I enjoyed reading these poetries, some touched me and some passed by me. This book reminded me of William Wordsworth poems, if you enjoy reading poetries, you should definitely read it!

Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the copy of this book.

This collection is a vessel for Rilke’s soul, it offers the readers with Rilke’s long lost soul. I see poetry as a medium to transplant the poet’s soul to whoever receives it and in this case it was me. His mesmerising poetic writing showcases his passion for new discoveries with the help of visual imagery and full of contradicting images.

“How did I hold out this face, that its feeling
rough spaces of strangeness worked through;”
(Paris, turn of the year 1913-1914) Translated by Will Stone

The poems are as complex as they are short and simply crafted from Rilke’s mind. They are not overburdened with rhymes or repetition. All exist with the help of their creator. As Rilke is a brilliant poet, the translator and editor Will Stone does his best to stay true to the original poems. Certainly, I do not speak German but you can sense the flawless complexity of the poems. What I usually look at translated work is if it flows easily and understandable to some content. Because we can all guess how hard it is to translate works from completely different cultures and times.

This was my second time reading Rilke's poetry and I will without a doubt reread this collection. There is a sorrowful soul behind these enigmatic poems and that name is Rilke. You can just sense his presence in all of the unseen poems and as a night lover. Rilke’s poetry can be extremely enigmatic at times, which is what makes his writing so excellent. Every human mind works in mysterious ways so does Rilke as a poet. He transcend the limits of writing poems about night.

Poems to Night is a poetry collection of twenty-two poems by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

To be honest, I don’t think this was the best to start with Rilke’s work, but since it was sent to by Pushkin Press in exchange for a review, I went with the flow.


I truly loved most the poems however, there were a few which I found difficult to connect with a bit. All things considered, I can’t know if this is because of Rilke’s writing or due to the translation, we all know poetry is something hard to get right when translating.

Rilke does not bother us with useless long verses which the only use is to fill pages, or with unnecessarily complicated rhymes. He gives the reader an insight into the connection one has with the world around themself and one’s mind. As you can see in the following verse:

“Is pain – as soon as the ploughshare,
labouring, naturally reaches a new layer –
is pain not good? And what can it mean, the last
interrupting us in the depths of such affliction?”

I think that given the year we have had; there are certain feelings brought out in these poems that we can relate to today, those of isolation and loneliness, which we can track to the author’s time during WW2. These are the things many of us have to deal with at night before we drift off to sleep.

All in all, this is a beautifully written book collection with a good translation, as fas as my translation knowledge goes. I recommend it to anyone who likes poetry as well as to anyone in search of a book to get in tune with their feelings and emotions.

I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

Bye, keep on reading.

The only work of Rainer Maria Rilke that I’ve previously read was ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ which I loved and found to be full of wonderful quotable lines and phrases. This in many ways is similar. The poems seem to float in and out likes waves on sand and there is either the option to read them and let the words float over you or dig a bit down at the layers within- both of which I’ve done and found equally rewarding. The translation here is very good and the introduction (which I read at the end to avoid spoilers) is far from dry and really adds to the background, as does the biographical section at the end. A fascinating poet.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

This is written from Rilke’s soul and this book is full of deeply emotionally grabbing and beautiful poems. This is the first thing I've ever read from Rilke and I will defiently be picking up other work from him! I defiently also want to reread this book because I find with older poems you need a physical copy so you can get out your highlighter and really analyse the poems! - especially with it having been translated, it's always hard to completed translate poetry from one language to anther but this was done so well! Also I read this on my kindle and a lot of the poems merged a lot so it was quite difficult to tell where a poem ended and a new one began!

But overall an amazing selection of poems!

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this poetry collection. This is my honest review.

To summarize my review, my feelings towards this book are basically Lady Gaga in that interview where she said: "talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before,etc."
Now my actual review:

With every new thing I read about Rilke, I fall more and more in love with his ideas and the way he expresses himself in words.
I really loved this collection of poems and all the work put behind it. The introduction seems fundamental to me and I feel it contributes a lot to the edition of the book because it accompanies the selection of Rilke's poems that compose this edition, and helps the reader better understand the context of production of all these poems, something that I feel is very important, because the Rilke of the Letters to a Young Poet is not the same as the Rilke after the Poems to Orpheus.
At the same time, I was very pleased that the book included a detailed biography of Rilke's life and the order of production of his works. This helps us, again, to understand the context of production of the poems and thus read into them in different ways.
This is a book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to read Rilke. I do not feel that it is the best book to start reading the poet, but I do not feel that it is necessary to have already read a lot about the author before entering this collection of poems. I, precisely, am just beginning to read Rilke and I still had an incredible experience reading this book, because reading the different poems I noticed how the tone of the writing and the style varied a little according to the year of production of each poem and that made even more excited to keep reading more Rilke's work. But because of the fact that within this collection of poems there are poems by Rilke in his twenties to Rilke in 1922, I think this is also an excellent book to reread the author. To return to him after having already read his most important works, and rediscover his words and his verses and rediscover him in your rereads. Because Rilke is definitely, for me, one of those authors that you never quite finish reading.
Anyway, a great book, with a beautiful edition, which I highly recommend.

This is a perfectly lovely collection of poems best suited to those who are already fans of Rilke's work. These are of course translated, so your personal preference may vary, but this is a fine addition to any poetry collection.

Poetry, like music, finds much of its beauty in the fact that it can be interpreted a thousand different ways by a thousand different people. Rilke's poetry is considered by many to be mystical. To me it seems not so much mystical as horribly, despairingly earthbound. What do these words of his mean? Read them at the age of twenty and again at forty and you will glean two entirely different meanings. What is the Night to which he writes? It is at times passion, prayer, torment, longing, loneliness. His words are musings or madness or something in between.

This is not clear, simple poetry. There are no rhyming lines, no steady march of syllables. This is poetry in its purest form, raw and conflicted and defying explanation. It is not for everyone, or even for every time. It may perplex you one year, grieve you the next, annoy you another. But when that time comes and you read just the right piece at just the right time, then the Night will sing for you.

Which is a fancy way of saying: you may or may not like this kind of poetry. But you'll never know until you try. And try again.

"Everywhere craving for connection and nowhere desire, world too much and earth enough."

I remember reading a couple of letters from “Letters to a young poet” several months ago but unfortunately I could not finish the read. But I knew that I would be coming back for more of his brilliant works. Which I did. The moment I saw the poet’s name I knew that I was going to pick it up.
A set of 22 stunning poems and several drafts that need sheer concentration to read and enjoy. I expected a little for these poems to send me back and question my entire taste in poetry. I can not comment on these poems as that is beyond my ability. All I can do is praise this book. Despite titled ‘poems to night’, this book made me sit resting my chin against my wrist and ponder in broad daylight. I wonder why people don’t write such deep poetries these days.
To be able to enjoy creations in other languages, I think, literary translators play a major roll. It takes a lot for them to put almost the same effort as the creator in a different language. For the translation and introduction in this book, applause for Stone.
Thank you NetGalley and Steerforth Press for providing this digital copy.

I've enjoyed all of Rainer Maria Rilka's poetry that I've read but Poems to Night especially are some of the best.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this poetry collection.

Rainer Maria Rilke's Poems to Night is a stunning exploration of sorry and mystery. I have read Rilke's works before and really enjoyed this collection and I am glad it is available for audiences to enjoy.

I absolutely love poetry, and love even more the theme of ‘Night’. I was very excited to receive this book of poetry dedicated solely to Night, in return for a review.

I have always felt drawn to the night time, when I am sad, angry, upset or even happy I feel the need to go for a walk in the dark, or to take a drive and sit in the dark somewhere and just be at one with the great universe. This poetry ,all exploring themes of nighttime seems to portray this inner lust for the nighttime in the same manner. I really enjoyed the different elements of the night, from the feelings of great vast nothingness, to the ethereal and almost divine.

My favorite line: “Overflowing skies of squandered stars splendour over grievance. Rather than into pillows, weep upwards. Here, at the weeping, at the ending face, proliferating, begins the enraptured world space. Who will interrupt, if you thrust that way, the flow? No one.”

This was a great little compilation of poetry from Rainer Rilke and I enjoyed the journey.

I do not usually purchase books of poetry anymore, or really read more than the occasional one off. But this book spoke to me! I love Rainer Maria Rilke's work. I especially love a whole book of it!

Poems to Night is the first time Rilke's Night poems have been published in their entirety, translated in English. In 1916, Rilke presented his friend and fellow writer Rudolph Kassner the twenty-two poems in a handwritten notebook.

Rilke wrote the poems between January 1913 and February 1914, during the same time he was working on the Duino Elegies, which has been my favorite volume of poetry for over forty years. And of the elegies, the eighth is my favorite; it was dedicated to Kassner.

In the Introduction, Will Stone confesses that the Poems to Night "possess the aura of a clandestine text, and resist any assured interpretation."

Which is a great relief to me, baffled as I have been by these verses. Each reading further reveals the arc of Rilke's vision, how the poems reflect his basic understanding. The experience of being human and finite, and aware of the vast mystery beyond, is the bedrock of Rilke's poetry.

I read the Poems of Night, and read them again. I reread portions of Rilke's biography and a fiction novel of his life to understand Rilke at the time he wrote these poems.

Rilke arouses feelings in me, with certain lines flashing out like neon, and yet to understand his meaning seems to always hover beyond my full grasp. I struggle with the poems, eliciting more from the lines with every reading. His poetry is so unique to his own world view.

There is the theme of alienation, how humans can never fully connect. And how humans are concerned with the temporal and trivial, "seduced" by the world. Above the world is night, the realm of angels, a sacred otherness which we long to encounter and yet "renounce."

The ending lines are powerful.

Lifting one's eyes from the book, from the close and countable lines, to the consummate night outside: O how the compressed feelings scatter like stars, as if a posy of blooms were untied...Everywhere craving for connection and nowhere desire, world too much and earth enough. (Paris, February 1914)~from Poems to Night by Rainer Maria Rilke

Drafts of the Night poems are also presented, along with snippets from his other works that include the theme of Night, and biographical notes on Rilke's life. He was abroad when WWI broke out, unable to return to his Paris apartment. He lost all his manuscripts, books, and personal belongings, including photographs of his family. When he presented the notebook of poems to Kassner, he was in the military working as a clerk.

Poems to Night is a significant addition to Rilke's published works that will interest his legion of readers as well as all lovers of poetry.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I have been a fan of this author since I read Letters to a Young Man when I was in college. So I was excited to see a new collection of his poetry.

This is a short book. Nearly a quarter of it is actually an introduction into the creation, translation, and publication of this collection. The short collection of poetry, including drafts and fragments, are all centered around the theme of night. And the last little bit is biographical notes.

A lot of these poems are more of a lyrical prose kind of poetry, with a lilting rhythmic cadence which would have been well served as an audiobook.

I will freely admit that I sometimes don’t fully understand the meanings of his poems, but I still appreciate the artistry of his work. I find specific lines and phrases that I feel a connection to, but sometimes it’s like picking out grains of sand from a beach too vast towards the horizon for me to fully grasp. And that’s okay. I plan on rereading this soon, and going back to some of Rilke’s other works.

What a nice collection of inspiring poems from an important poetic voice. Lots to think about here. I haven’t read Rilke in a while and I found this was a great path back to his work.

Poems to Night is a new English translation of Rilke’s 1916 collection of poems themed around the night. It includes the twenty-two poems of the “Poems to Night” collection, as well as seven draft poems from the same collection and another fifteen poems and fragments on the theme of night. Most of the poems were written during the same period as “Duino Elegies,” which is one of Rilke’s most beloved collections. The period in which the collection was being composed was a tragic one for Rilke. He was trapped by the war in Germany (while he was born in Prague, he’d been living in France at the time) and all his possessions [in France] were disposed of by his landlord.

He had a bit of military service, and — though it was a desk job — he wasn’t cut out for it. And he had an intense affair with a French artist. The poems mix imagery with a heavy dose of strategic ambiguity — leaving the possibility for the poems to be interpreted in various ways. One might suspect a collection themed around the nighttime and written by a German in the midst of life crises would be deadly morose, but I felt that Rilke balanced the more somber elements with beauty and vibrancy. The poems felt more like a reach for catharsis than a wallowing in suffering (a fault of many poets, in my opinion.) I found this collection to be evocative and mind-expanding. I’d highly recommend it for readers of poetry.

A beautiful, thought-provoking collection of poetry all centered around "night." This was my introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke and I am very interested in reading more of his poetry. Sparsely but powerfully worded.

While I haven't consistently read Rainer Maria Rilke I have encountered his poems and other writings frequently. I will see snippets of it here or there and it always ends up hitting close to home. So I jumped at the chance to get into his poetry proper, to see how they connected to each other and to, hopefully, gain a clearer understanding of Rilke as a poet. Also, look at that cover, how am I supposed to resist that. Thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In his introduction, Will Stone tries to place these poems in the wider oeuvre of Rilke's poetry. Written around the same time as his Duino Elegies, these poems are taken from a notebook gifted to Rudolf Kassner. Late night is the perfect time for this, when everything is dark and quiet and you can just be and ponder without interruptions. For me, night has always been calmer than day. Moonlight and starlight are infinitely preferable to sunlight. Not to quote The Hobbit movies but for me starlight is memory and is precious, and night allows me to ponder and consider in the way the day doesn't. Just as night allows one the freedom to roam, so Rilke's poems cover a variety of themes and ideas, lingering on them but not belabouring them. As Stone argues, these poems feel like 'a clandestine text, and resist any assured interpretation'. Rilke isn't aiming towards one message or one theme. Rather, Poems to Night roam freely but all carry an equal emotional weight. There is a desire for connection, but also a desire to live freely and to not be constrained. The below line is an example of that:

'Overflowing skies of squandered stars splendour over grievance. Rather than into pillows, weep upwards.'

Just like midnight ponderings, Rilke's thoughts and poems leap wildly. They are not restricted to specific rhymes or rhythms but rather speak strongly to the soul. They are not long and ponderous, strangled in metaphors but rather flow smoothly. Will Stone surely did an excellent job translating this flow to retain Rilke's seeming effortlessness and inspiration. Stone's introduction provides an excellent background to Rilke's creative process and the circumstances in which this collection came into existence, namely Rilke's displacement due to WWI. It explains the lack of permanence and the evanescence of night that dominates the poems. Although the poems aren't easy to understand at first glance and although they may require some perseverance and patience, they are stunning once you let them work on you.

Rilke's Poems to Night are beautiful and presented beautifully in this edition. Stone's translation and introduction are illuminating and anyone with a love for poetry will greatly enjoy this.

A lovely little book of a selection of Rilke's poems touching on some aspect of "night," with a nice introduction and a short biographical section at the end. Very enjoyable.

Fantastic read!! Thank you NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the eARC of Poems to Night. To me this book was full of magic and I love it. Very elegant, simple and light. Every poem feels like a magical spell in the night.

Rilke is one of my favorite authors. I loved him so much that I read Malte Lauris Brigge in German.
His voice is unique and I cannot help loving his words and his poetry.
He talks to your soul and I cannot think of not loving him.
DIscovered some new poems and loved them.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Beautiful. Thoughtful. Detailed. These works will make you become a lover of the night. Written beautifully