Fifty Poems

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Geoffrey Lehmann (translator)

Fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, publishing in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth.

Rilke is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, revered throughout the world. Geoffrey Lehmann has selected fifty of Rilke’s finest poems from the two volumes, entitled New Poems, that are the center of gravity of his achievement. Lehmann’s refined ear and perfect mastery of English verse form give his renderings of Rilke a precision and poise that are equal to that of the German originals. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Rilke’s death a master poet lives anew.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2025

About the author

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

Reviews

[nerd3000]

The lines are short and the pages are spare but the intensity of everything Rilke offers with his work is seriously incredible. So much movement and vivacity in everything—he animates the dull and imbues the already human with so much energy and life!! I didn't know to expect this kind of simple (but effective) force. I do understand why he's so highly regarded, even though i'm still not entirely sold on poetry... its usually too ephemeral to hold the weight of my attention for very long

Plus every word matters too much and i'm not used to that kind of saliency........

[Eric]

“The poet,” William Gass writes in Reading Rilke, “never forgets a metaphor.” And he’s right; he doesn’t. Open to a random page of R. and you’re liable to see a piano player’s “hand, heavy with its jeweled ring, and slow / as though trudging through drifts of snow / travel across the ivory keys.” Some birdcall ringing through a faded wood? It makes “a sound as round and wide as the sky.”

That isn’t just Rilke, though. It’s Rilke as translated by Australian poet Geoffrey Lehmann, whose English renditions fill out Fifty Poems like subtle clones of the originals. Unlike most translations of Rilke’s work, Lehmann’s versions refuse to dispense with the rhymes that Rilke (prior to the Duino Elegies) found so indispensable. There isn’t a poem among these that doesn’t rhyme—not an easy feat for either author, neither German nor English being languages readily disposed to rhyming. But wait; there’s more: Lehmann also mirrors the number of syllables in the master’s lines.

Read the rest, here! - https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/09/1...

[Harrison Schaff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a translation of 50 of Rilke’s New Poems: short, metrical, lyrical poems, mostly about things. Sadly, I don’t speak German, so am bound to translations. That being said, Lehmann’s translations were excellent, maintaining the musical quality of the original rhyme and meter. I can’t say how they compare to the original, but to my taste, they were lovely forgeries.

Enough so to pique my interest in lyric poetry—though it’s unfortunate my understanding amounts to something akin to looking at art through foggy glass. The best remedy will be more poems.

[William Robison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmmmmm, reading more poetry has made me more comfortable with reading poetry. Who would have thought?

Surprisingly, I was entirely engrossed in this collection of poems. Poetry is not usually a genre that really pushes all of my boundaries, but with William Carlos Williams's Spring and All, and now with this collection of Rilke's poems, I've started to come around.

I would recommend this to anyone interesting in reading very vibrant, thoughtful, metered, and compelling poetry.

[Nat B]

love it when the translation is right next to the original. these are beautiful, but still don't think I'm really a poetry gal? will try again in a few months and see

[Jack Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fifty Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

2025 is the year I've dipped my toes back into reading poetry, and I think I've found a clear "winner" or "beacon" as to the type of poetry I want to read. When this little pocket book arrived, I had the idea of reading three poems a day, which didn't happen; instead, I devoured it in two days. 

Although technically this isn't my first time with Rilke, as I read Letters to a Young Poet years ago, this is my first time reading his poetry. Even though I remember enjoying Letters, as the jaded and yet severely naive artist I was trying to be, the work never truly clicked, how ironic. However, this return to Rilke was spurred on by the author William H. Gass discussing this work and Rilke's influence on his own prose. After reading this work, I can see where Gass has pulled from. 

Even though I'm still lacking in the particular vocabulary to describe and discuss poetry (maybe that's the point, or I never will), these poems were completely arresting. They are a swarm of empathy, exposing and exploring the universality of existence in a beautiful and simple way. As I worked through the material, I made sure to reread entire poems or certain stanzas to really get inside the words, and I did have the urge to read aloud. 

Perhaps it's the change of season or this strange early Indian Summer we're having in Ontario, but these poems really struck something within me, and it's a feeling I'll be trying to track down with other works of poetry in the future. 

[Megha Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘To do this vainly seeking more and more, and find nothing of substance and then die alone, not understanding why-

Or does a new life open through this door?’

Rilke is one of the writers I feel a great, personal kinship with. His poetry has a pure, almost impersonal intensity to it, that is bigger than self, that encompasses all of us, and yet is so deeply personal, so sentimental. My favourite poet of all time.

[Lawson Cope · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather interesting collection of Rilke's poems pulling exclusively from Neue Gedichte. I suppose I would have preferred a wider collection, with some inclusions from Das Stunden-Buch, Duineser Elegien, or Sonette an Orpheus too, but that's neither here nor there. I'm a big fan that translator Geoffrey Lehmann presented the poems interlineally, and I must say his translations are very well done; Lehmann brilliantly captures the style and flow of Rilke in the English.

[Clare Sheridan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entrance, the departure of the prodigal son, child in red final verses

[M.P. Conn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, uplifting... just as poetry should be.

[Vinnie Tan Gana · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no nobility in pain.

Rilke teaches us how to live.