Rilke and The Poetry of Things

Ajouté : 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. Um, I'm outside today as you can see out at the office um in order to be among be among things which is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about Rilka and thing poems uh which is what we'll be studying in June. But I'm out here uh on Prospect Hill which has a nice tower and beside the tower a garden of native plants that they let grow wild. Sometimes you'll see the goldfinches out here and I've seen a couple cat birds already. Um, and it's just at the end of day of a perfect time to be reading uh Rilka's poetry. A lot of the folks on burst wanted Rilka.

[00:00:43]They've been asking for Rilka and Dante uh recently and we will get to Dante eventually and we will make a deeper study upon Rilka. But I think we're going to get started with his poetry of things or his thing poetry, what he called dingadict and uh so we're going to be starting that in June. There are certain poems that you read and you're in total possession of intellectually, emotionally and um a lot of English poetry is like this actually. English poetry is a lot of thought and emotion unfolding in verse and you kind of just follow the logic and the movement of that unfolding and um but I found that something happens when I'm reading Rilka it's it's a very different experience and I'm not sure if you've experienced this but it's different from that and that's not to say that Rilka is difficult he's not a difficult poet like TS Elliott or Ezra Pound or difficult poet I mean He's intelligible, although he's just as as as intelligent and and witty and and elusive sometimes as as Elliot can be. But there's something about the level of awareness when reading Rilka's poetry. And it's almost like it's almost like when you're working with your hands, maybe you're washing the dishes and some secret thought begins to unfold within and you're following the movements of a certain train of thought beneath the level of the awareness of of what you're doing with your body through your hands, washing the dishes, and it's difficult to describe what exactly is happening there. And I feel that the same thing happens but on a deeper level when reading Rilka because there's this there's this aspect of like you're understanding the words, you're intuiting the emotion, you're feeling the emotion, but there's also something else happening. It's almost spiritual where the poem becomes translucent. And some poetry really does this. But I find like and other readers have talked about this too that when reading a reala poem, your mind becomes almost like a liar in the hands of a really skilled musician.

[00:02:54]Chords are played, strings are played in which you didn't even know were possible. I feel like the same thing happens happens with Rilka. There's this twofold perception of what the poem is saying and how you're experiencing it. studying thing poetry, the poetry of things as he described it, dingadicta in the 21st century is really interesting because we have a very unique relationship to things in a way that human beings just never did. Like right now there's such an ephemererality about objects that we have. You know, if you need something, you just order it from the internet and it arrives at your door. If something is not working, you just throw it away and you replace it.

[00:03:39]And that's a very different relationship to objects, to things, plants, animals, uh, than what our grandparents and their grandparents had. And I think in the the the age of the 21st century, and the post-digital age, we we are like having a disconnect between things, between the blades of grass, between the trees and the sunset and the sky and the stars that come out and the light upon the clouds. We don't have like this this idea of an awareness of it that they're participating in the same life. You know, things are objects around the house of course are replaced. We live in the age of plastic, you know, but but but objects back then would have been replaced the way, you know, like a chair leg, a broken chair leg would have had a second life as a wooden spoon or something, you know. It's just you repurpose it. You had a different relationship to the objects in the world around you. And I find when reading Rilka's thing poetry that the life of things really becomes apparent.

[00:04:41]And I think that's partly what our study of thing poetry on verse in June is going to help readers come to an awareness of. We're going to be studying the poetry, but we're also going to be writing thing poetry. thing poetry for for Rilka is is is understanding how an object comes into human perception and that it's that that focal point of human attention that almost it gives it a glowing nimbus or a halo and and brings it into relationship with human beings. And it's almost at times that Rilka feels that the world needs human attention or that human attention was made for the world and the world for human attention. Now some people would say that's a very anthropocentric view.

[00:05:25]That's a very like human- centered view.

[00:05:28]Um but I think it's deeper.

[00:05:30]You know Platinus the neoplatonist talks about how the world soul exists to make beauty intelligible to the mind of the human being. And I think Rilka has this similar view. We're going to eventually study the Dwino allergies, but before we get there, we have to study thing poetry. However, I want to read you this passage from do we know allergy number nine by Rilka?

[00:05:55]And he's asking what does it mean to be a human being when you can be a plant like a laurel tree? Like what does it mean to be a human now? And his answer is really astounding. Here's here's first the question and I'm reading Steven Mitchell's translation by the way. This is what we're going to be reading on the platform.

[00:06:17]Why if this interval of being can be spent serenely in the form of a laurel slightly darker than all other green with tiny waves on the edges of every leaf like the smile of a breeze? Why then have to be human and escaping from fate? Keep longing for fate.

[00:06:41]Oh, not because happiness exists.

[00:06:45]That too hasty profit snatched from approaching loss. Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart which would exist in the laurel too, but because truly being here is so much.

[00:07:02]Because everything here apparently needs us. This fleeting world which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us the most fleeting of all.

[00:07:15]Once for each thing. Just once. No more.

[00:07:19]And we too. Just once and never again.

[00:07:25]But to have been this once completely if only once.

[00:07:31]To have been at one with the earth seems beyond undoing.

[00:07:37]It's like real says that why be human instead of a blade of grass or or or a laurel and it's the consciousness of being here and he has this wonderful world word in German abal here vist but because to be here is so much and you know there's this common phrase today our our idiom go touch grass which I really like I'm doing that now I'm almost like kind of buried in grass And as you know, I'm sure it it just means go be in touch with real things.

[00:08:12]Go experience reality.

[00:08:15]And Rilka has a word for that which I find amazing. Here sign being here. And it's like for real to be in the here and now, to be in the here sign is the pinnacle of the human experience and something unique to the human experience and something that retire that requires human attention.

[00:08:36]which invests things around us with sort of sacredness.

[00:08:45]So we will be studying uh Rilka's new poems which are published in 1907 um and 1908. The second new poems came out in 1908. So we'll be reading only 18 of those in June. And the reason why I've assigned so few is so that we can give immersive repeated attention to a handful of poems each week. And by the way, these two volumes that we'll be reading from are two of the four poetry collections upon which Rilka's reputation rests. So this is really the beginning of it. So this will be our prelude into the Duino eleies. And um a lot of people a lot of readers have have described reading these poems as walking into a museum of objects.

[00:09:34]And so in our readings, we're going to be looking around. We're going to enter this museum of poetry and we're going to encounter the objects mediated through poems and we're going to learn how to channel attention toward the world and and write our own poetry. Uh, in doing that, Rioka really does speak uh, what one critic called the the soul language, the ceiling spraa, and we're going to be learning as best we can how to how to understand it, how to speak it ourselves in this study. So, if you're interested, you can sign up.

[00:10:05]It's a cheap monthly rate, but we also have discounts, especially for young students. Um, but really, this is a place where anyone can come and study poetry with me and others. uh where we'll be discussing uh Rilka's new poems. So, if that's interesting, I hope to see you there. Thanks for joining me on this very now dark twilight of the early spring of 2026.

[00:10:28]Uh a great time to give our attention to the life of things.