I first discovered Rilke earlier this month when one of my friends posted a snippet of his poetry for National Poetry Month. The lines entranced me, and I decided I wanted to read more. So I found this selection of his poetry and read it from start to finish. 
 I loved the critical introduction by Robert Haas--it was a fascinating look at Rilke's life and poems, and helped me get a lot more out of my reading, by understanding the context. 
 My impression of Rilke is that his poems describe the beauty of loneliness, the meaning in emptiness, and the self-discovery in loss. In one of his requiems, Rilke writes: 
 I have my dead, and I have let them go, 
 and was amazed to see them so contented, 
 so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful, 
 so unlike their reputation. Only you 
 return.... 
 The brilliantly crafted ten elegies that make up Duino Elegies were incredibly sorrowful, bringing death close, but in some ways transcending death itself. In one of his sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke writes: 
 Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were 
 behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. 
 One of my favorite poems is Rilke's first sonnet to Orpheus: 
 A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! 
 Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! 
 And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence 
 a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. 
 Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright 
 unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; 
 and it was not from any dullness, not 
 from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves, 
 but from simply listening. Bellow, roar, shriek 
 seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been 
 just a makeshift hut to receive the music, 
 a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing, 
 with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-- 
 you built a temple deep inside their hearing. 
 Reading Rilke makes me want to look, to see, to experience the world more deeply. It makes me want to stop running from my sorrows, and instead let myself experience them. 
 Since I've never read Rilke before, I can't comment on this particular translation or edition in comparison to the others. This one does have the original German on the opposite page, for those who happen to read German (I do not). 
 I need more poetry in my life. Reading Rilke has made that clear to me.