New Poems
A century and a half after his birth, Rainer Maria Rilke remains woven into English-speaking culture in ways unexpected for a difficult modern poet, and especially one writing in German. Many readers will know individual titles from the two volumes of New Poems ( Neue Gedichte), presented here in full. But the vast majority of these poems are little known in the English-speaking world. In John Greening’s fresh, lively translation, the tidal pull of Rilke’s internal music and astonishing imagery comes to the surface alongside the poems’ elaborate rhyme and meter.

Although Rilke’s poems are often described as Dinggedichte—thing-poems—that term is more useful in helping us see the poems themselves as individual artifacts, which in turn conveys something of Rilke’s style. What may be surprising to those who assume that poets write solely on inspiration is the business-like way Rilke set up a production line for the New Poems, starting with a list of a hundred or so topics and crossing them off as he went.

These poems look both inward and outward, and their variety is considerable—there are tour-de-force works as well as simple, quietly affective pieces. Rilke makes formal and thematic connections across a spectrum of tone and tempo. As Greening claims, these disparate pieces coalesce to reveal something we didn’t know we were waiting to find.

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New Poems
A century and a half after his birth, Rainer Maria Rilke remains woven into English-speaking culture in ways unexpected for a difficult modern poet, and especially one writing in German. Many readers will know individual titles from the two volumes of New Poems ( Neue Gedichte), presented here in full. But the vast majority of these poems are little known in the English-speaking world. In John Greening’s fresh, lively translation, the tidal pull of Rilke’s internal music and astonishing imagery comes to the surface alongside the poems’ elaborate rhyme and meter.

Although Rilke’s poems are often described as Dinggedichte—thing-poems—that term is more useful in helping us see the poems themselves as individual artifacts, which in turn conveys something of Rilke’s style. What may be surprising to those who assume that poets write solely on inspiration is the business-like way Rilke set up a production line for the New Poems, starting with a list of a hundred or so topics and crossing them off as he went.

These poems look both inward and outward, and their variety is considerable—there are tour-de-force works as well as simple, quietly affective pieces. Rilke makes formal and thematic connections across a spectrum of tone and tempo. As Greening claims, these disparate pieces coalesce to reveal something we didn’t know we were waiting to find.

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New Poems

New Poems

Overview

A century and a half after his birth, Rainer Maria Rilke remains woven into English-speaking culture in ways unexpected for a difficult modern poet, and especially one writing in German. Many readers will know individual titles from the two volumes of New Poems ( Neue Gedichte), presented here in full. But the vast majority of these poems are little known in the English-speaking world. In John Greening’s fresh, lively translation, the tidal pull of Rilke’s internal music and astonishing imagery comes to the surface alongside the poems’ elaborate rhyme and meter.

Although Rilke’s poems are often described as Dinggedichte—thing-poems—that term is more useful in helping us see the poems themselves as individual artifacts, which in turn conveys something of Rilke’s style. What may be surprising to those who assume that poets write solely on inspiration is the business-like way Rilke set up a production line for the New Poems, starting with a list of a hundred or so topics and crossing them off as he went.

These poems look both inward and outward, and their variety is considerable—there are tour-de-force works as well as simple, quietly affective pieces. Rilke makes formal and thematic connections across a spectrum of tone and tempo. As Greening claims, these disparate pieces coalesce to reveal something we didn’t know we were waiting to find.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781481323543
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Publication date: 11/15/2025
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist.

John Greening is an English poet, critic, playwright and teacher. 

Table of Contents

Part II. Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / New Poems: The Other Part
Translator's preface by Len Krisak
Introduction by George C. Schoolfield
Part I. Neue Gedichte / New Poems
Part II. Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / The New Poems: The Other Part
Index of Titles and First Lines in German
Index of Titles and First Lines in English

What People are Saying About This

Hilary Davies

In this ambitious new translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s New Poems, John Greening gives English speakers a rare chance to appreciate this great poet at the moment when he entered maturity. Greening engages enthusiastically with the exceptional range of Rilke’s form and subject: it is as exciting to read both his accomplished versions of such favourites as ‘ Orpheus, Eurydice. Hermes.’ as it is to encounter Rilke’s less well-known Biblical sequences and city evocations in a fresh translation. Greening’s empathy and poetic skill allow us better to enter Rilke’s world and understand his importance to German, and indeed European, poetry.

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Related Subjects

Literature
Literary Criticism
European Literature
General & Miscellaneous European Literature - Literary Criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
European Literature
General & Miscellaneous European Literature - Literary Criticism

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