A review by poetryandsolitude
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

challenging emotional reflective

5.0

At my core I need nothing more than to see how neural connections change after reading this book. That is about to be my phd proposition in a couple years, i feel changed beyond return!!

I really liked the extremity of Rilke’s language, and most often than not I really enjoy books written in an epistolary form,  it feels like you are catching a glimpse of someone’s life through their own thoughts. 

I loooved letter 8, it felt like a slap to the face and also like the most comforting thing ever. I found out most of the topics discussed in ‘letters to a young poet’ to be intriguing, and I resonated a lot with Rilke’s thoughts on solitude. 

The book became available at my library at the best time, it’s such a summer afternoon book, and I think its themes align seamlessly with this part of my life. 

These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come.