A review by jasminawithab
New Poems by Edward Snow, Rainer Maria Rilke

slow-paced

3.25

imo rilkes best writing is about feelings or people. ik he does a lot of 'thing poetry' but its just not for me so this collection was pretty meh. i really didnt like how rilke talks about women, especially girls, here honestly. it was very gross. im also just not the biggest fan of Snows translation? i looked up a handful of poems from different translators and liked them way more, so maybe ill revisit this in the future but with a different edition

my fav full poems were The Olive Garden, Lament for Antinous, and The Song of the Women to the Poet

the beating of your wings leaves me bruised
- The Poet

she was no longer the blond wife
who echoed often in the poets songs
no longer the vast beds scent and island,
and that mans property no longer
she was already loosened like long hair,
and given over like fallen rain
and handed out like a limitless supply
she was already root.
and without warning
the god stopped her and with pain in his voice
spoke the words: he has turned around-
she was puzzled and answered softly: who?
- Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes

for i want then amidst the rubble heaps
finally to hear my own voice again-
which from its first moments was a howling.
- Jeremiah

everything still remembers, still weeps, still hurts-
-The Pavilion

not one of you could grasp the Bithyian boy
(ah had you seized the stream and heaved it off him...)
yes, i pampered him. and to what end? we have
only filled him with heaviness and forever dimmed him.
who then can love? who has the strength? - none as yet.
and so i have inflicted endless pain-.
now on the Nile he is one of the quiescent gods,
and i can scarcely tell which and i cannot get close to him.
and still you would hurl him, you madmen, out to the stars,
to have me constantly demanding: is he that one?
why can't he just be someone dead? he wouldn't mind.
maybe then nothing would've happened to him.
- Lament for Antinous