Translated by Edward Snow In 1984, Edward Snow won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for the first volume of translations of Rilke's watershed work, New Poems [1907]. His work was praised for the resonance of the English and its faithfulness to the density and meaning of the German.

Rilke's association with Rodin in 1902 inspired in him a new poetic method. "Somehow," he wrote, "I too must come to make things... realities that emerge from handiwork. Somehow I too must discover the smallest basic element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of representation for everything." Until this work, Rilke's voice had come from the interior, expressing feelings and moods. New Poems represented a turning point, an intoxication with the materiality of the world.

New Poems [1908] contains such famous works as "Archaic Torso of Apollo," "Corpse Washing," "Buddha in Glory," and "Late Autumn in Venice."