Monday, November 13, 2006

Don Paterson's Rilke

Mark Doty sings the praises of Don Paterson’s new “versions” of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. I can’t wait to read the book, but I’ll have to hang on for the paperback version. The price of hardbacks is crazy, considering the paperback will appear in (I guess) about 6 months time. I am trying not to give in.

“Don Paterson's new versions - his term, to distinguish the poems from more assiduously faithful renderings - of this legendary sequence… create a warm, far more earthbound Rilke. Paterson gives the sonnets, perhaps for the first time in English, a true sense of an inhabited skin, a pulsing body responding to the life of the senses.”

1 comment:

Rob said...

Thanks, Mark.

I really would like my wife to get me clothes for Christmas, but maybe she'd get me this book too if I'm especially nice to her.