World Class Poetry Blog

Poetic Craft: Rilke’s Letters Prove His Devotion To Poesy
25 October 2007, the poet @ 10:59 pm

I’m a big fan Rilke’s. Always have been. I read his Letters To A Young Poet while in college and was quite intrigued by his passion and devotion to craft. I devoured the advice he gave to a younger poet who struggled with his own personal issues in craft. They were intimate and revealing - not just of the man, but of the craft inside him.

Chekhov’s Mistress recently published a great piece by M. Allen Cunningham, author of Lost Son, a novel based on Rilke’s life. I particularly liked this paragraph from that blog post:

For Rilke the line between public and private did not exist. He presented to the world the persona of the unadulterated artist (committed wholly and exclusively, at every private hour, to his work) and he seems to have embodied this persona in all his private moments as well.

Are you this devoted to poetic craft? Should you be?

I know it’s difficult to achieve that completely. Most of us have lives outside of poetry. Family. Jobs. Careers. Loves. Laughs. And obstacles and interferences to overcome. But can we turn those things into our poetry? Or craft our poetry from them? A poet, a true poet, one who is a poet at heart, can take any moment, any scenario, any life reality and make it a poem. That’s what Rilke did. Can you?

Get Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet

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