Sir I hope you read this. I'm a military vet from the US. I've struggled with PTSD and depression for a long time. And recently I've found your work and videos. And you have absolutely inspired me and given me so much peace of mind. I've started reading again and just looking at my life completely different. You've inspired me to be better and overcome my own battles. I cannot thank you enough for simply being you.

When I was in University, I read "The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Cristoph Rilke" while taking a semester in Germany. It was like discovering a new colour, it was radical and bold and made me feel something altogether new. However, it was a translation and my German was impoverished to get to the original source. However, the "Versioning" that Paterson is trying is intriguing because it can get to the original source, the original fire instead of just reconstituting the warmth to a new and different language. There's a poetic idea here: getting to the original source by using your own poetic filter by "versioning". This, as an Anglican priest, is keen to me because it my own teaching it makes the Scripture important to make it personal, to make it through my own filter and soul (while still, of course, grounded in the original and primary source). Thank you, Malcolm for sharing this and I'm going to seek out Paterson.

My wife has a few volumes of Rilke among our shelves. I've given them a couple half-hearted attempts without success Thank you for inspiring me to try again. Seems that one could only read 'The Spirit' and not acknowledge its debt to the Gospel of John if one were intentionally playing the Devil's advocate. So maybe Patterson's interpretation brings us closer to the truth by offering us the chance to think it through.

Fabulous to hear from you Malcolm. And a fine thing that you are able to appreciate the work of a poet from across the ideological chasm.

You know Its a good day when when you see "Malcolm Guite uploaded [....]" in your KZfaq notifications. Thank you, Sir. I really enjoy your introduction and commentary. This was quite interesting, I had never heard the ideas of Orpheus and Christ connected before.

As a gardener, "seeds fattening toward summer" caught my attention. Every poem you read in this video was thought provoking and a blessing.

I agree with you about form malcolm. I always have to use meter in my poetry otherwise it doesn't feel like poetry to me. I've argued with my teacher about it.

It is lovely to sit here at my table, as the July sun sets gently, “antennae reaching out” and touching your recent post. We have been talking about Holy Spirit in our little church meetings lately. These words dovetail beautifully with where my mind has been. Thank you, again.

Awesome insights into the breathe that makes us ... that breathed us into living beings. Thank you Malcolm.

Always enjoy your videos!

Another excellent video .Really enjoy Paterson and this has encouraged me to get hold of this book.

Thank you Dr Guite. I always learn so much from your delightful homilies.

I so enjoy not only the readings, but the background, bio, and tidbits surrounding the text. I look forward to these literature experiences in your library.

thank you, malcolm.... i purchased don paterson's version of rilke's orpheus as a direct result of your fantastic readings and enthusiastic commentary

Love these videos keep up the fantastic work!

Good to see you back from your travels Malcolm. As you sort you study out I too am sorting mine out to move to my new Church appointment. So, I begin to work out what is needed and what is not. I am moving to the Frinton-on-sea, on the Essex coast and I shall be now forever thinking about movement and stillness whenever I see the boats go by. Blessings.

Great to hear from you again Dr. Guite. I particularly enjoyed ‘Breath’ for its profound yet simple ideas that not only unify the present but also the past and future. Christ himself shared our ocean.

Just purchased a copy of Orpheus. Love Rilke's verse!

Don Paterson is an amazing poet

Your Library door has developed an awesome dramatic, suspenseful creeEAk! Anyday now, the Beeb will be begging you for a recording to use for gothic mysteries. I think it's getting ideas above its station (the door, not the BBC).

I'm glad I found you sir, may I ask what blends you like to smoke whilst reading?

Malcolm you should track down the poetry of Chris Mann, who died one or two years ago. A South African, Rhodes Scholar, Newdigate Prize winner, and committed Anglican, he was Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University in South Africa. You can probably track his work through the English Department at the university, who can point possibly you to where you can order them online. He was also a very kind, warm person. Whenever I hear your poetry I think of him. Another poet from the same university, btw, who died many years earlier is Don Maclennan. His poetry is not explicitly religious - he was an atheist after all - but at its best plumbs the depth of the spirit. One of his close friends was an American Anglican Benedictine monk who lived nearby, who saw him as his secular spiritual director.

Postscript: just goes to show how much my mind can be trusted lol. The translation of Lou-Andreas Salome's letters with Rilke is by Angela von der Lippe, and the Russian religious poet is another note under the coffee-stains in my old notebook.

Never seen anyone use the same bowl to cut both their hair and beard.

Malcolm, have you ever considered doing voice recordings? I'd love to hear you read whole novels or other long works. Tolkien perhaps...

So sustaining and enriching Reverend Guite! I'm all for intertextuality and reimagining as tributaries to the majestic river of poetry (and faith, and dreaming, and love, and interiority), but this fellow sounds a bit like he's trying to strip Rilke of his archaic and superstitious elements and transmogrify him into something he wasn't. The reductionist materialists and New Atheists project rejected aspects of their own being onto the faithful and the imaginative, but, sorry, Mr. Paterson, here's Rilke in a June 26 1914 letter to Lou Andreas-Salome: "...the more I examine it, it must be that I have one posture (the one to which I have educated myself in certain moments of work), and my soul has another, the next one, or the one next to that. And so I no longer serve it and nobody serves it. It is the bell-metal and God places it into the incandescence over and over again and prepares for the powerful moment of casting. But I am still the old form of the previous bell, the obstinate form that has done exactly what it willed and does not want to be replaced---and so it remains uncast. How can I understand so much and not be able to help myself..." (this is from You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke by L. Jeskow, the Russian religious poet) Something inchoate is afoot with Orpheus and Christ these days I suspect, mythos and return and musics. A terma about to be revealed perhaps. But what do I know, lol. Thanks!!!!

I have a hunch that the Spirit speaks through your procrastination - so maybe the tidying can wait a bit longer?

Orpheus is not the first literary figure to descend to the underworld and return... Though she was a goddess, Inanna is recorded as having done the same. She does suffer death for a three-day (perhaps longer? Check me) period, after giving up her emblens of power, also symbolic of her sharing the suffering of mortals to a degree, showing solidarity. There are other examples as well in ancient literature. I guess they were all foreshadowing christ too. Although I prefer to think of them along with Christ as being different evolutions of a beautiful and ancient mythology.

Morbius