Letters to a Young Poet

Title: Letters to a Young Poet

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

Genre: Nonfiction, Poetry

Time: 2.5 hours

2015 Book Challenge: a book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t

Took me a while to decide on a book for this challenge because I usually read required books in college and I even buy and read the suggested books.  There are very few readings I didn’t read but they were mostly certain chapters of textbooks and now that it’s 10-15 years after college, I can’t remember what they were. 

 

It was only now that I remembered Letters to a Young Poet.  I forgot which subject this was for, it was either Theology or Philosophy but for some reason (I don’t know why) I think it was for Filipino.  I do remember that it was a female professor which rules out Philosophy, so it’s either Filipino or Theology.  I didn’t read the book because it was just so damn boring at that time.  I remember winging it during class recitation and, thankfully, I wasn’t called up and the book did not come up in the exams.  Funny thing is, not only did I keep the book, I brought it with me when I moved here.

 

So when I finally read it now, I still didn’t want to finish it.  I even tried to cheat and tried to read the reviews before reading it.  People were raving about it.  But for me, it was just tedious to read.  Maybe if I was a Rilke fan, I’d get all the hoopla…  or maybe if I into was into poetry, I would appreciate this.  But I’m a prose kinda girl.  His letters just went on and on.  I wish he’d just say directly what he wanted to say.   But by letter number four, I kept hoping it would end already.  At times, I had to read it aloud just so I could force myself to keep going.

 

No offense to Rilke fans out there, but for me, I read to “escape.”  I also need plots, characters, arcs and resolution.  I use solitude to discover and live in “another world” found in the pages of a book.  But Rilke advocates the opposite thing.  He wants to use solitude to discover/discern one’s self an advice he gave to the poet so he could be a better poet.  This felt like a self help kinda book which isn’t my cup of tea.