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Letters to a Young Poet

Rilke's timeless letters about poetry, sensitive observation, and the complicated workings of the human heart.

Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898, and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908, Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke's life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them.

This edition of a beloved classic brings Rilke’s enduring wisdom about life, love, and art to a new generation, in the translation that first introduced him to the English-speaking world.

Letters to a Young Poet is expertly narrated by Tomás Larisch Frazer, and translated by M.D. Herter Norton. This audio edition includes an additional “Foreword” by M.D. Herter Norton from Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by M.D. Herter Norton.

Copyrighted by W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.