Waterfield who received a doctorate in classics and English literature at Christ Church, Oxford and has worked as a music instructor in the UK and Germany, offers what he considers a poetic, rather than literal, translation of Rainer Marie Rilke's "The Duino Elegies." A brief introduction to Rilke and this collection of poems, is followed by both the original German and English translation of the ten elegies, with additional introductions before each poem. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Translation Prize
'Alison Croggon's transformative and impassioned translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies attempt the extraordinary - to bring existence into a temporal-spatial focus. Signature, regret, pain, trauma, wonder, euphoria, wonder, rapture and an immersion in the senses are all contained in the crispness and experiential sensibility that guides Croggon's relationship with the original poems. Croggon lives in the wild beauty of these elegies and makes them glow in translation... This is an incendiary work.' - John Kinsella
'Alison Croggon's new translation of the Elegies has a directness, immediacy, sensuality, and violence that distinguishes her from precursors like J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender.' - Australian Book Review
'Croggon shows us how to do things with lyric in ways I can only envy.' - Jill Jones
'Alison Croggon is one of the most powerful lyric poets writing today.' - Australian Book Review
'Alison Croggon's transformative and impassioned translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies attempt the extraordinary - to bring existence into a temporal-spatial focus. Signature, regret, pain, trauma, wonder, euphoria, wonder, rapture and an immersion in the senses are all contained in the crispness and experiential sensibility that guides Croggon's relationship with the original poems. Croggon lives in the wild beauty of these elegies and makes them glow in translation... This is an incendiary work.' - John Kinsella
'Croggon's poems offer something intense, difficult and fragile, but simultaneously intimate and hugely rewarding in the reading.' - Cordite Poetry Review
'Alison Croggon is one of the most powerful lyric poets writing today.' - Australian Book Review