Letters to a Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Random House, 1984

Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Written when the poet was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his poems, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them.

With his translation of Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and of Letters to a Young Poet, Mr. Mitchell has now made available distinguished contemporary renderings of Rilke's best-known prose.