Travelogue, literary autobiography, and journalistic expose of the mores of capital punishment, Rue Rilke chronicles its author's initiatory Rilke pilgrimage to France and Switzerland and-upon his return to America-his up-close involvement in death penalty politics. Immersed in the legal and human drama unfolding in Houston in the days leading up to an impending execution, the intimate linkage of love and death learned from Rilke aid him in his efforts to confront his country's sanction of lethal violence and make spiritual sense of his torn, too often black-and-white world.

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COMPOSED IN A BURST of inspiration near the end of the poet's life, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus represents the consummation of the writer's career, distilling the essence of his poetic wisdom in a gem-like sequence. This new translation--with the original German on facing pages--offers a clear window into the world of this endlessly scintillating cycle of poems.

"Daniel Polikoff's English version of Rilke's last sonnet sequence, perhaps his greatest work, is wholly admirable. Rilke's late work is extremely difficult to penetrate. Both its conceptual nature and Rilke's unique use of the...

Travelogue, literary autobiography, and journalistic expose of the mores of capital punishment, Rue
Rilke chronicles its author's initiatory Rilke pilgrimage to France and Switzerland and-upon his
return to America-his up-close involvement in death penalty politics. Immersed in the legal and
human drama unfolding in Houston in the days leading up to an impending execution, the
intimate linkage of love and death learned from Rilke aid him in his efforts to confront his
country's sanction of lethal violence and make spiritual sense of his torn, too often...