A rainy, replenishing Boston evening. I pulled Rilke off the shelf because he reminds me of love and all things becoming. Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian architect of dream verse, aka poetry. This particular collection of poems I’m reading from I have a secure memory of acquiring, in one of my trusty dusty haunts in Western Mass. I remember because it was New England winter yet I had the most beautiful orangey-yellow, garden roses that radiated the sun itself.

Solar roses.

They left such an imprint on my mind and I’m so glad to have photographed them.

Rilke is an echo that keeps bouncing. His collected influence while alive just seems to magnify across time. Perhaps most famously is his collection of Letters to a Young Poet. Kamran Javadizadeh wrote an exploratory article about the correspondence that inspired the letters.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” —Rilke

For a deeper dive into the ripples of Rilke’s relationships, and influence, “You Must Change Your Life” by Rachel Corbett is illuminating. A beautifully written portrait that dips smoothly in and out of the parallel lives of Rainer Maria Rilke and my other favorite, Auguste Rodin. Their spheres of influence, the shaping of their lives and creativity. In my mind it is a movie.

What isn’t a movie.

Found a vintage portait of myself when I was in the archives searching for the rose photos. Dark hair, oh my!

Enjoy x