Rating: 
Summary: A primer in love, divine and human
Review: I hadn't read Rilke in years. And then, wonderfully, I pulled this hitherto unopened translation off my shelves, and rediscovered what so moved me in his poetry when I was a young man. Rilke has the true poet's gift of seeing more deeply into the fabric of existence than most of us, and the ability to invite us to look a bit more closely. He hints, insinuates, teases, and almost always illuminates.I particularly love this book because Rilke, in keeping with the tradition of love mysticism, wants to suggest that there's no fundamental difference between the intense yearning for another person and the intense yearning for God. As the poet/narrator tells a young monk struggling with passions of the flesh, "now, like a whispering in dark streets/rumors of God run through your dark blood." Love of God and love of humans are both erotic inasmuch as they involve the entire person, mind, soul, and body. To long for the beloved is necessarily a sensual experience. Moreover, reminiscent of the great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, Rilke holds that God erotically yearns for us as much as we yearn for God. One of my favorite poems in the book, "Was wirst du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe?", hauntingly worries about the devastatinig effect the poet/narrator's death will have upon God the Lover: What will you do, God, when I die?
I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)
I am your drink (when I go bitter?)
I, your garment; I, your craft.
Without me what reason have you? ...What will you do, God? I am afraid.
Rating:
Summary: A primer in love, divine and human
Review: I hadn't read Rilke in years. And then, wonderfully, I pulled this hitherto unopened translation off my shelves, and rediscovered what so moved me in his poetry when I was a young man. Rilke has the true poet's gift of seeing more deeply into the fabric of existence than most of us, and the ability to invite us to look a bit more closely. He hints, insinuates, teases, and almost always illuminates. I particularly love this book because Rilke, in keeping with the tradition of love mysticism, wants to suggest that there's no fundamental difference between the intense yearning for another person and the intense yearning for God. As the poet/narrator tells a young monk struggling with passions of the flesh, "now, like a whispering in dark streets/rumors of God run through your dark blood." Love of God and love of humans are both erotic inasmuch as they involve the entire person, mind, soul, and body. To long for the beloved is necessarily a sensual experience. Moreover, reminiscent of the great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, Rilke holds that God erotically yearns for us as much as we yearn for God. One of my favorite poems in the book, "Was wirst du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe?", hauntingly worries about the devastatinig effect the poet/narrator's death will have upon God the Lover: What will you do, God, when I die?
I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)
I am your drink (when I go bitter?)
I, your garment; I, your craft.
Without me what reason have you? ...What will you do, God? I am afraid.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best book that I have ever read.
Review: I love this book, and I'm somewhat surprised by the chilly reception it's received in this forum. I guess it comes down to what you want out of the poetry you read. I'm not a Rilke "scholar" although I have read almost all of the contemporary translations that I can get my hands on, and I am, perhaps, unencumbered by the weight of the Rilke personality cult that seems to have developed. I won't apologize for other reviewers' claims of overt and questionable editing practices by the translators. I have read Rilke translations by the mentioned authors and it is true that Mitchell is the best, but I have no qualm whatsoever with the present edition. Those who seem so mired in the political and philosophical aspects of this translation are guilty of the same type of griping that accompanied Robert Lowell's "Imitations" (which also features Rilke translations btw). In my opinion they miss the point. I read this edition on its own terms, and I find it incredibly incisive, poignant, faith affirming... I can scarcely read this book without getting choked up and misty eyed. It gives voice to ideas that echo my own sentiments and strike a resonant chord with me, and that's all I ask of poetry. The question of fidelity to the original is moot in my opinion, and if you must speak on technical terms, adherence to a rhyme scheme inevitably leads to an inferior translation, since rhyme and meter simply don't translate well. It's like forcing the round peg into the square hole. Don't speak of stylistic consistency AND invoke Mitchell. That's nonsense. Cheers, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. Your New Age sensibilities are not my cup of tea, but your edition of The Book of Hours is breathtaking.
Rating: 
Summary: i like it just as it is
Review: I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in this world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing-
just as it is. One can approach this translation as a purist, eyeing the metre like a hawk or as a lover of beauty. how many music "lovers" do we know who can extol this tenor or that, this composer or that, but are unable to simply relax into the music, like dropping into a feather bed?! This translation is a feather bed; it may be made of fake materials, but who cares - the words, the images, the meanings are so delicate and close to the heart that it warms up and then one's intellect ceases to care. Let us not be too tight. Or as Rilke says: I want to unfold.
let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
Rating: 
Summary: More an exercise in interpretation is this...
Review: Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry sings and dances...in its original. This book is again proof that is well-nigh impossible to translate poetry and to preserve its fundamental nature. What places the finishing touches upon Rilke in his native German is his beautiful sense of linguistic balance, of metric symmetry. This translation was executed, though, with no regard to metre (the translators admit as much). While they tend to successfully encapsulate Rilke's meaning, it is rather a free-form exercise...often omitting two or three lines at a whim...would perhaps be better to view this as Anita Barrows' personal interpretation of Rilke's poetry. Poetry is extremely challenging to translate (Rilke notoriously so); this is a game effort, and an interesting approach...but it isn't really Rilke at the end of it all.
All that said, I refrain from dunning this entirely...the kernel of Rilke's meaning pokes through, but I firmly recommend reading this instead in German, ability provided. As far as suitable English translations of Rilke, the best ones available to my mind are those done by Edward Snow.
Rating:
Summary: More an exercise in interpretation is this...
Review: Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry sings and dances...in its original. This book is again proof that is well-nigh impossible to translate poetry and to preserve its fundamental nature. What places the finishing touches upon Rilke in his native German is his beautiful sense of linguistic balance, of metric symmetry. This translation was executed, though, with no regard to metre (the translators admit as much). While they tend to successfully encapsulate Rilke's meaning, it is rather a free-form exercise...often omitting two or three lines at a whim...would perhaps be better to view this as Anita Barrows' personal interpretation of Rilke's poetry. Poetry is extremely challenging to translate (Rilke notoriously so); this is a game effort, and an interesting approach...but it isn't really Rilke at the end of it all.
All that said, I refrain from dunning this entirely...the kernel of Rilke's meaning pokes through, but I firmly recommend reading this instead in German, ability provided. As far as suitable English translations of Rilke, the best ones available to my mind are those done by Edward Snow.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't like the translation
Review: Rilke is my favorite poet, but this translation does not do justice to him. I think it is very unfair for modern translators to assume that a contemporary reader would find meter and rhyme "too singsong to convey accurately the seriousness of Rilke's meaning" (quote from the translators' "Notes on the Translation"). Rilke's subject matter and ideas are captivating on their merit alone, but one cannot separate meaning from style in poetry. I believe that to change Rilke's style in a translation is to depart completely from what he felt about his own work, and to drastically weaken what gives his poems their power. Therefore, I prefer the work of stricter translators of Rilke's poetry, such as C. F. MacIntyre.
Rating:
Summary: Awful translation.
Review: Supposedly, this is a very good book by Rilke, but the translation by Barrows and Macy is just plain BAD, awful, pathetic. I have been ultimately disappointed with this book for many reasons... the translators have not properly given respect to what Rilke wanted to say; they have omitted many poems because of (I think) their own preferences, and other lame excuses; the poems themselves are vague, indistinct, ambiguous, not quite like Rilke. If you want a good sample of Rilke, read Mitchell's translations... his work on Letters to a young Poet was very, very, very good. Unlike the one on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible, destructive translation
Review: The Book of Hours is one of the greatest text that I know, having read it in the original German, this English translation is an insult to the poet and the reader. They have edited the text down, omitting essential sentences and paragraphs. Skip this one until there is a better translation available.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite - My favorite book, ever.
Review: This book is magnificent, and my copy is dog-eared and worn from hours of loving perusal. I don't speak German, and though
I can respect the purist point of view, I nonetheless found this book to be an amazing read, which I return to time and time
again. The words draw you in and hold you, enthrall you with
their very powerful messages and images. The beauty of his poetry would be tragic to miss. Ich lese es heraus aus deinem Wort I read it here in your very word,
in the story of the gestures
with which your hands cupped themselves
around our becoming - limiting, warm. You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be. But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you'd ripened.
A screaming shattered the voices that had come together to speak you,
to make of you a bridge
over the chasm of everything. And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name. - How can you not read this and and be moved?
How can one not read this and feel part part of
a greater whole? Awe-inspiring. Exquisite. Beautiful.
Brilliant, simply brilliant. This collection was my introduction
to the magnificent Rainer Maria Rilke, and this novice will forever and ever be grateful to Barrows and Macy for it.
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