"The poets scattered You about;
a storm passed through their stammering-
but I want to gather You once more
in the vessel that pleases You."
-- Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke knows something of the weight of words. They have the power both to make and unmake; to create and to crumble: "they are so far removed from us," he writes, "trapped in their eternal imprecision, indifferent with regard to our most urgent needs; they recoil at the moment when we seize them; they have their life and we have ours" (The Wisdom of Rilke).
And yet, Rilke wrote. Through the sieve of words he let the emotion and experiences of his life sift into poetry; merge with the words that so easily dissolve at the most delicate touch. What he describes in the stanza above as little more than a "stammer" is to us a glimpse at the heart of a poet's prayer.
In Paraclete Press' new book,
Prayers of a Young Poet, Mark S. Burros translates sixty-seven of Rilke's poems from German, along with annotations Rilke penned when the words were originally written. Anyone who has read the biblical Psalms, or perhaps SAID's new book of contemporary psalms
(99 psalms), knows that poetry has built a bridge between humankind and God for centuries. What is unique about Rilke's collection is the ingenuity of the author's perspective.
In
Prayers of a Young Poet, Rilke imagines himself as a monk. He writes stories in poetry and prose through the voice of a cloistered man who experiences, in his daily living, the solitude that Rilke came to know so well- alone inside the writer's cell of his own mind and body. The narrative enfolds Rilke into the lines of his own poem; capturing his longing to be "the vessel that pleases [God]" (
Prayers, 56).
In his
Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke encourages the poet to "descend into yourself and your aloneness." These words resonate through
Prayers of a Young Poet like a man who hears the solitary song of death at his door:
"I pass away, I pass away,
like sand running through the fingers of the hand.
And suddenly I have so many senses,
all in their different ways thirsting.
I feel myself swelling and aching
in a hundred places,
above all in the depths of my heart."
(Prayers, 24)
For those of you who are regular readers of this poetry blog,
Under Sheets of Paper, you may have already sensed my own connection to Rilke (and to this book in particular) - if not simply in my author bio: "i imagine myself a monk in my cell. i light candles. i pray. i write poetry. i make love in my dreams," then perhaps in the spirit behind my posts, which is heavy with the anguish of dying and the hope of new life and resurrected love.
Rilke is to me a reminder that my poetry should leave more cracks in the words for light to seep through. If you have been searching for a companion on your own dark journey toward the light, I commend to you: Rilke's poems in
Prayers of a Young Poet.
Thanks to
Paraclete Press for inviting me to blog on this wonderful new book and be refreshed by the words of a fellow "poet-monk."
