" 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.