Letters to a Young Poet

This book is a gem for artists. It talks about the greatness of loneliness, the life of an artist, dealing with grief, striving for love, and living your way to your questions instead of asking for their answers. It is a series of letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet who’s full of doubts regarding the craft and life as a creator.I am having trouble getting around to fiction these days. I am more into letters and journals and this one was certainly the right book to start the year with. "You are so young, all beginning is so far in front of you, and I should like to beg you earnestly to have patience with all unsolved problems in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, or books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given to you, because you could not live them. That is the point, to live everything. Now you must live your problems. And perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer some distant day.” Off to reading some poetry of this guy and Neils Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen.

This needs to be read multiple times to truly understand and appreciate the wisdom in this short book. I enjoyed thinking about it and would soon return to it ..

The book kinda looks like a student textbook but the content really shines through.I got this during my final year MBBS exams where life just seemed to fall apart for me and I was doubting my choices. I read a letter a day and then read the parts that strung a cord with me whenever I was stuck on a topic or chapter. It really helped me pull through. 💜One of my best buys off amazon.

A book which adds context to your unfinished thoughts. Great emphasis on importance of solitude. Loved every bit of the book.

A page is worth a mountain of essence. And nearly every page is like that. For blue blooded writer artists, this is meditation on papyrus.

The paper cover and print is quite cheap for the amount, though the reading satisfied my interest.

Each letter is an amazing read, must read for anyone who is a poet and wants to be a poet.

Bad printing. Terrible font. Do you think ten year olds will read this? I was hoping it was some recognized translation. No, it isn't. Someone is making money by selling this on amazon for this prize. You feel cheated despite the amazing content.

I am full-on obsessed with the tenderness and beauty of Rilke's choice of wording. It soothes my soul.

Weird format, too tall. Doesn't fit in a bookshelf. The writing itself is, to quote Nabokov, "a frightful bore". This book is meaningless and pretentious. How a book of 39 pages can be so mentally taxing is beyond me.

Letters to a young poet talked deep to my heart eroding all the momentary intellectualism, connecting me to guts and purity, where our most true selves lie. It a must read for all of those who feel like they still haven't found what they are looking for but haven't given up finding it. A clue: 'the great thing' is closer than you think.

It only takes reading a few letters written by this man to really begin to change your perspectives about loneliness, love, creativity and questions about your purpose in life.

I absolutely love this book, highly recommend definitely worth the read, whoopi Goldberg recommended in her book about relationships called if they say you complete them run? And also on sister act, i then bought it off her recommendations and I love it