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Chiron Publications' Book Spotlight for June
Rue Rilke
by Daniel Joseph Polikoff, Ph.D.
Paperback Edition Regularly Priced at $26
On Sale for $13Hardcover Edition Regularly Priced at $65
On Sale for $32.50 ---------------------------
Travelogue, literary autobiography, and journalistic exposé of the mores of capital punishment, Rue Rilke chronicles its author’s initiatory Rilke pilgrimage to France and Switzerland and—upon his return to America—his up-close involvement in death penalty politics.
Immersed in the legal and human drama unfolding in Houston in the days leading up to an impending execution, the intimate linkage of love and death learned from Rilke aid him in his efforts to confront his country’s sanction of lethal violence and make spiritual sense of his torn, too often black-and-white world.
“It has been two decades since I completed Rue Rilke, the literary diary-turned-book that chronicles my travels to France, Switzerland, Houston and Chicago in the summer of 1993,” Polikoff says. “The European part of the journey unfolds my quest for more intimate knowledge of Rainer Maria Rilke himself, the poet whom I adopt as a spiritual guide; knowledge that is immediately and severely tested in the crucible of anti-death penalty activities deep in the heart of Texas.”
Rue Rilke gives voice and form to the inspiration Polikoff drew from his discovery of Rilke at a relatively young age. Since that time, his engagement with the writer has deepened and born riper fruit; even so, Rue Rilke represents the seedtime of his transformative relation to modernity’s Orphic poet.
“Political history also contributes to my interest in publishing the book at this juncture,” Polikoff says. “Recent developments—most signally, the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and a spate of other news-grabbing instances of white-on-black violence—has once more thrust the issue of racial discrimination into the spotlight of American public conscience.”
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Poet, translator, and internationally recognized Rilke scholar Daniel Joseph Polikoff received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and his Diploma in Waldorf Education from Rudolf Steiner College. In addition to work in numerous literary journals, he has published five books of poetry, translation, and criticism, including In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke—A Soul History and a bilingual translation of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. He resides with his wife Monika and family in the San Francisco Bay area.
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