For those who ‘love poetry’ – and those who do not – here is a highly engaging, enjoyable study of one of literature’s most inspirational and unorthodox voices, Rainer Maria Rilke. The book tells many stories and includes more than 90 of Rilke’s most sublime poems, many translated by poet and scholar Mark S. Burrows. Dr Dowrick – a leading Rilke scholar among her other achievements – offers a fascinating psychological analysis of Rilke’s extraordinary life, and makes vivid why he remains so unusually relevant to 21st-century readers, ‘thinking beyond dogma and orthodoxy’.
‘Stephanie Dowrick’s gift is a capacity for sharing with readers her lifetime’s pleasure in poetry and the company of one of the greatest of poets.’ David Malouf, Poet and novelist
‘This book is lovely: serious, informed, honest, warm, delightful to read. Stephanie Dowrick has accomplished something wonderful, bringing us into the company of the most human of men and into the presence of his astonishingly beautiful poetry.’ John Armstrong, Philosopher and co-author with Alain de Botton of Art as Therapy
‘Stephanie Dowrick’s writing and career are characterised by motifs of renewal and re-imagining..Dowrick’s work is eclectically informed and pioneering… She vividly creates a sense of readerly receptivity to the mysteries of a poem.’ Felicity Plunkett, Sydney Morning Herald
Published in the US by Penguin/Random House; in ANZ by Allen & Unwin.