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five years pass...
two years pass...
this thread is cute
― k3vin k., Friday, November 25, 2016 11:55 PM (two years ago)
literally just came to post this
― k3vin k., Monday, 24 June 2019 05:20 (four years ago) link
there are different rilkes for different moods, for me. when I'm feeling romantic/nostalgic, my go-to is "to lou andreas-salome", especially the second stanza:
s one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.
it's at once tenderly specific and vague enough to be about anybody; I think of three people when I read it. "love song" also has a particular couplet that is really simple but always chokes me up: "upon what instrument are we two spanned? / and what musician holds us in his hand?"
when I just want to be bowled over by amazing writing, I'll re-read some of my favorites from new poems -- "archaic torso of apollo" is probably still my 'favorite', though I don't read it as often anymore because I've just read it so many times. "orpheus. eurydice. hermes." never fails to crush me. that entire collection is filled with really great stuff
a couple of months ago, I got most of the way through his "duino elegies", and loved the shit out of it, but they are dense, I need to read them each several times before moving on to the next one, and ultimately I became distracted with reading other things and life and haven't finished. that will have to be a project for an upcoming weekend
I own two volumes of his work: ahead of all parting, a very comprehensive collection translated by stephen mitchell, and "letters to a young poet" (also mitchell). before I started the elegies I'd have chosen "letters" as my desert-island rilke (and probably one of my ten desert island books, period), since I've more or less memorized most of my favorite short poems of his anyway, but now I'm torn, because I think I would need the elegies, and I still haven't started "sonnets to orpheus"
― k3vin k., Monday, 24 June 2019 17:50 (four years ago) link
literally had my first day today. I'm still alive and so is everyone else!
― k3vin k., Tuesday, June 25, 2019 8:57 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
whoa congrats!
― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 26 June 2019 02:15 (four years ago) link