Every page is stamped with Rilke's characteristic grace, and the book is free of the breathless effect that occasionally mars his poetry. His ideas on gender and the role of the artist are also surprisingly prescient. And even his retrograde comment on the ''beauty of the virgin'' (which the poet derives from the fact that she ''has not yet achieved anything'') is counterbalanced by his perception that ''the sexes are more related than we think.'' Those looking for an alluring image of the solitary artist--and for an astonishing quotient of wisdom--will find both in Letters to a Young Poet.