Review by Library Journal Review
Not quite literal and not quite poetry, these translations arrive on the heels of Snow's version of Rilke's New Poems: The Other Part (1908; LJ 9/1/87). Snow's assertion that Rilke's output needs to be read in the sequences assembled in his lifetime justifies this project, the first complete edition in English, but it begs to be superseded. M.D. Herder Norton, who did not venture the complete Book of Images , remains the most welcoming of Rilke's career translators, while Robert Bly's adaptations are more magical. Snow is most successful in matching the tension in Rilke's poetic line and his calculatedly awkward vocabulary. One finishes this book with the appropriate breathless, disoriented sensation of having read a lot of Rilke. Though ``images'' were still important at this stage in his development (1902-06), this is already the poet who hears ``words which mean nothing certain/ and yet go, go inside the ear, keep going/ into the brain and secretly on the nerve-branches/ through every limb try out leap after leap.''-- Rob Schmieder, Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
