A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/WEST TRANSLATION AWARD

The 100th Anniversary Edition of a global classic, containing beautiful translations along with the original German text.

While visiting Russia in his twenties, Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, was moved by a spirituality he encountered there. Inspired, Rilke returned to Germany and put down on paper what he felt were spontaneously received prayers. Rilke's Book of Hours is the invigorating vision of spiritual practice for the secular world, and a work that seems remarkably prescient today, one hundred years after it was written.

Rilke's Book of Hours shares with the reader a new kind of intimacy with God, or the divine--a reciprocal relationship between the divine and the ordinary in which God needs us as much as we need God. Rilke influenced generations of writers with his Letters to a Young Poet, and now Rilke's Book of Hours tells us that our role in the world is to love it and thereby love God into being. These fresh translations rendered by Joanna Macy, a mystic and spiritual teacher, and Anita Barrows, a skilled poet, capture Rilke's spirit as no one has done before.

One of the most beloved poets of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke is widely celebrated for his depth of insight and timeless relevance. He has influenced generations of writers with his classic Letters to a Young Poet, and his reflections on the divine and our place in the world are disarmingly profound. A Year with Rilke provides the first ever reading from Rilke for every day of the year, including selections from his luminous poetry, his piercing prose, and his intimate letters and journals. Rilke is a trusted guide amid the bustle of our daily experience, reflecting on such themes as impermanence, the beauty of creation, the voice of God, and the importance of solitude. With new translations from the editors, whose acclaimed translation of Rilke's The Book of Hours won an ardent readership, this collection reveals the depth and breadth of Rilke's acclaimed work.

Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry offers a rare combination of insight, beauty, and accessibility that has delighted readers for generations. Beloved for its unique lyrical style and musical language, his work stands as some of the most remarkable poetry of the past one hundred years.

In Praise of Mortality is an artfully curated selection of poems from Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies that investigate the emotional and psychological impact of the industrial revolution, and meditate on themes of impermanence and the steady passage of time. Barrows, an award-winning poet herself, and Macy, a well-known spiritual teacher, bring to their translations a striking sensitivity to the subtle currents of the work, approaching the poems with a fresh perspective that highlights the delicacy of their craft and beauty.

With a deep reverence for nature and a singular ability to embody the tenuous connection between the spiritual and material, Rilke's sonnets and elegies are a thoughtful antidote to the distractions, noise, and ever-increasing pace of the modern world.

With If Not Now Anita Barrows posits that one cannot bear witness from a safe distance, that, to do it properly, one must join in the bloodletting. These poems foreground an oft-overlooked truth about structural violence-poverty, displacement, and police shootings. It is a bomb that detonates in our communities, whose blast radius extends well beyond the body lying lifeless in the street. They remind us that the only way to transcend this violence, to repair that which has been broken, is through connection.

-Zach Wyner, Author of What We Never Had

Anita Barrows is a poet of the morning and the future. Her poems in If Not Now are songs to life and hope. They offer the reader a subtle embrace from a poet whose own work is inspired, it seems to me, both by her translations-with Joanna Macy-of Rilke, and her day-to-day engagement with the real world as a psychotherapist working with very troubled children in a world exploding with challenges.

-Dennis J Bernstein, award-winning poet, author of Five Oceans in a Teaspoon

Anita Barrows lets us see ourselves in the hidden sorrows and heroic acts of everyday. These poems reveal that a brave rebellious heart can transform the world.

-Joanna Macy, activist and author of Active Hope

Gracie is a serious, sensitive, aspiring writer; Jannie, her autistic younger sister, is passionate about birds. As children, they were taken by their mother on a senseless trip through Europe that ended in their mother's suicide. Now, in Berkeley, their father works tirelessly to find ways to engage Jannie, while Gracie--unwilling to reveal the truth about her mother's suicide or her sister's autism to anyone outside her family--weaves a web of lies around herself that isolate her even as Jannie, in part through her relationships with and understanding of birds, begins to speak, interact, and emerge.

Narrated by Gracie and alternating back and forth between 2002, when the sisters are still children/adolescents, and 2017, when they are in their early adulthood, The Language of Birds is a story of coming to understand what seems unfamiliar and indecipherable, and of finding authentic ways to be with the people you love.