Paul Blaschko (@paulblaschko)

Thanks Rand! Wow. I don't know Rilke very well, so I appreciate this introduction. I always feel like a personal recommendation like this is massively helpful in helping me jump into a poem -- especially one that I know is well-known, a "classic," etc. I just googled a few poems, and I'm into it. Especially the poems that capture a season or some particular phenomenon (like "Before Summer Rain," or this one, about the coming of fall: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50937/day-in-autumn). I like the religious stuff, too, and am intrigued by the way the author of R's bio on the Poetry Foundation's website describes his relation to the Christian tradition. Do you have the Anita Borrows translation of "Book of Hours"? And any favorite poems we could use as a starting point from that book?