Robert Bly and Randall Jarrell are the only two major American poets who have translated extensively from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, but their versions of this German poet’s works have never been more than superficially examined. Through a detailed analysis of their respective approaches to Rilke and a study of their lifelong preoccupation with Rilke’s poetry new light can be shed on a major factor in the development of the poetics and styles of these two modern American writers.