Reading Rilke's "Duino Elegies" (a new translation)

​Hello! There's a new translation of Rilke's "Duino Elegies" (translated by Mark S. Burrows, who has a great translation of Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus"). What better way to enter the gathering storm of winter than to congregate and savor each of the 10 elegies?

​Some background: The elegies are "difficult poetry", according to some translators who brought them into English for the first time. Which is true, if the intent is to analyze and understand them with our minds.

​But their deeper, perhaps hidden power lies in their ability to speak to us, in what they bring up in us. They are not a "puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced." After all, we "the living all make / the mistake of distinguishing too sharply."

​Rilke advised a friend of his, who had trouble reading his elegies, that there was no other way to enter their "radiant darkness" than by "initiation, familiarization, and submission." Let us submit then, together.

​*I will have print copies of the elegies. But feel free to grab your own copy of the translation!

​(I imagine we will spend most of the time reading them aloud rather than discussing them. But if there's time afterwards, discussion is definitely welcome and likely to follow!)