Con-verse-ing with Poetry Selections by Stefan George

THE SUPERBLY CRAFTED LYRICS of German poet Stefan George (1868-l923) embody a range of moods that not only charm the hearer by their verbal music but make the responder want to continue the melody and to elaborate or amplify suggested implications. Roughly contemporary with Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Stefan George shares the former's enthusiasm for word music in verse, for metric melody. I've published dialogues with Rilke in my translation from German of his Book of Hours (1903), and here I offer more con-verse-ations while I translate Rilke's fellow word-musician, Stefan George. The George collections I translate here are those where the poems appeared to invite a verse interpreter; the project seemed a "call," part of a larger "calling." In my verse "replies" I'll sometimes offer a poem I've translated from some other public domain writer I admire and I'll try to emulate the spellbinding lyrical sound and at the same time to respond as grateful listener and psychologically curious explorer.