The New Poems are for me Rilke s greatest poems, written under the shadow of mon grand ami Auguste Rodin to whom their second volume was dedicated. They are method poems. Not waiting for inspiration, but taking the handicraft of a poem, and setting himself subjects, the way a shoemaker might, or a sculptor. Thing-poems, Dinggedichte, poems about things, but also poems that are a thing. The two volumes are, in my view, two of the most beautifully made poetic sequences ever. Michael Hofmann

In Rilke not only do the stones and trees become human as they have done always and everywhere poems have been made but humans become things and nameless beings and only then gain their ultimate humanity. Robert Musil