Poems from the Book of Hours

First published in 1941 by New Directions as part of the Poets of the Year Series, Babette Deutsch's now classic translations from Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours ("Das Stundenbuch") are available at last in a paperbound edition. The original German text, as in the earlier book, appears en face. "Rilke's Book of Hours," Miss Deutsch writes in her preface, "falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Alth…