Rilke's French poetry appears here for the first time in readable, musical versions. Largely unknown and rarely collected, these poems were written during the euphoria Rilke felt after having completed his greatest German works, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. At the same time, Rilke was growing increasingly ill with a rare, undiagnosed form of leukemia. He died just four short years into the production of these poems, and death appears in them as a kindly, unfamiliar figure to be faced with courage and surrender. Five series of poems are featured Roses, Windows, Affectionate Tribute to France, Valaisian Quatrains, and Orchards. Near the end of his life, and after the crowning achievements of the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, Rainer Maria Rilke began writing poems in French, hundreds of them, and in these astonishing translations by Susanne Petermann we have almost a new Rilke, a poet enticed by the textures and nuances of the French language to explore new to