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.
There are so many footnotes, references, and shout-outs to poems in this book that, as someone who’s pretty far from the whole poetry world, it took me a while to get through it. To really get what these letters are about, you kinda have to dive into the works of everyone involved.
This isn’t really a correspondence between three people — it’s more like a conversation between art and talent that’s totally detached from everyday reality.
First read - January 2022. Reread - August/early September 2025. It feels almost unbelievable and a little shameful even, that I once gave it 4 stars. And still, I’m also glad. Perhaps that missing star reflected something was still missing in me. I want to believe now these three years have made me softer - more attuned to beauty, more open, and above all, more compassionate. And maybe now I finally see the star I couldn’t see before and all the other stars no scale could ever contain.
As there are no words that could reflect this book without diminishing it, I offer only my own very humble “thank you” to all three poets, and all the people who made this book possible.