Dance the Orange

RAINER MARIA RILKE: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems <P> Translated by Michael Hamburger and edited by Jeremy Mark RobinsonThis edition has been revised and updated. www.crmoon.com <P> This new collection includes poems taken from the time of the great German poet's New Poems through the Duino Elegies to the last pieces. These are some of Rainer Maria Rilke's best works; they are intense compact lyrical and lucid by turns erotic heartfelt and mystical. Hamburger's excellent translations have the German original facing each poem. </P> <P> Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the greatest of all lyrical poets. Rilke is part of that group of European poets and writers which includes Friedrich Nietzsche Arthur Rimbaud Georg Trakl Marina Tsvetajeva and friends such as Andre Gide Lou Andreas-Salome and Paul Valery. </P> <P> Rilke was an incredibly inventive creator of poetry who could forge the myriad states and images of love from the delicate detailed and subtle to the passionate illuminating and ecstatic. </P> <P> Rilke was adept at inflecting language with blissful tones: while he could describe the many experiences of love he found it difficult to turn them into realities to act on his words. For him love could be a transitory fragile state between two people. 'Why do people who love each other separate before there is any need? Because it is after all so very temporary a thing to be together and to love one another'. Rilke saw life as a 'continuous flow of vicissitudes' change following change so that parting was inevitable and people should become used to it ('at any moment be ready to give each other up let be and not hold each other back'. </P>