I inherited many books from my older brothers—esoteric books from the 1970s on running and weightlifting, and Pietro di Donato’s classic novel Christ in Concrete, about an Italian immigrant family of laborers shattered by the death of their patriarch. But my favorite is Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. It is a book that has been a seasonal refrain in my life. My copy is the 1963 paperback Norton Library edition with a blue and red checkered cover, translated by Mary D.