In Lyric Orientations, Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge explores the power of lyric poetry to stir the social and emotional lives of human beings in the face of the ineffable nature of our mortality. She focuses on two German-speaking masters of lyric prose and poetry: Friedrich Holderlin (1770 1843) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926). While Holderlin and Rilke are stylistically very different, each believes in the power of poetic language to orient us as social beings in contexts that otherwise can be alienating. They likewise share the conviction that such alienation cannot be...

In Lyric Orientations, Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge explores the power of lyric poetry to stir the social and emotional lives of human beings in the face of the ineffable nature of our mortality. She focuses on two German-speaking masters of lyric prose and poetry: Friedrich Holderlin (1770 1843) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926). While Holderlin and Rilke are stylistically very different, each believes in the power of poetic language to orient us as social beings in contexts that otherwise can be alienating. They likewise share the conviction that such alienation cannot be...