Sonnets to Orpheus

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2025 Indie Book Awards Finalist | Poetry

“Rilke's voice from the last tumultuous young century reaches tenderly into ours. But his lush German is a language of its own. Mark Burrows has a rare gift to coax it faithfully into English. I am delighted, and so very grateful for this book.” —Krista Tippett, host of “On Being”

On the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation.

This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke's poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows’ versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems’ “dazzling obscurity,” refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilke’s formulations present. The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them.