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STILL TIME to enter your collection for the University of North Texas Rilke Prize

Bohemian-Austrian Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Bohemian-Austrian Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The deadline for submission of a book for this prize is November 30, 2016. This is an annual competition with “a $10,000 award recognizing a book that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year.” Details are HERE. This particular award is for books written in English only by citizens of the United States.

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke’s photograph is in the public domain

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PERFECT FOR EASTER: David Whyte on Rilke’s “Swan” and Walcott’s “Love After Love,”

If you are viewing this from an email subscription, it’s likely you will have to link through to the site to view the video.

Priscilla Galasso (scillagrace) wrote about Swan’s at Half-light today. Her lovely post reminded me of Rilke’s poem Swan. I sent her this video to which she replied “really brings out the Easter message of meeting death with grace, of meeting your Self in a great celebration of joy.” Yes! I rather think so … and here it is shared with all. Thanks to Priscilla and to David Whyte and Easter blessings to all who celebrate. Enjoy! xo

Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke
Love After Love by Derek Walcott

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God, are you the one who is living life?

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In honor of Penticost Sunday, a little something of Rilke’s for Cousin Dan and The Congregation of the Holy Spirit. Love ~

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

– Rainer Marie Rilke (1874-1927), Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, from The Book of Hours, Book 2, Poem 12

© 2015 photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved