It wasn’t widely known that Rilke, who ranked as one of the finest
writers for his work in German, also wrote over 400 poems in French.
The French poems were written toward the end of Rilke’s life, after
producing his masterworks, the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to
Orpheus. A. Poulin, Jr. notes in his Preface that “The French lyrics do
not directly undertake great subjects and themes. Rather, they are
small poems of careful attentiveness to the things of this world, to
the common things of this world, and to the elusive states of being in
which the world is poetically transformed.”
“Poulin is a deft translator, with sympathy for Rilke’s ideas and a nice sense of rhythm of lines.” —The Washington Post
