Rainer Maria Rilke's Poetry

Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry considers human vulnerability, transformation, and the relationship between visible things and inward experience. Poems such as The Panther and Archaic Torso of Apollo make close attention to a particular subject the starting point for a larger inward encounter. The Duino Elegies extend his questioning through images of angels, love, and mortality, while Sonnets to Orpheus draws on the mythic singer to explore song and change. The Book of Hours uses the forms and language of prayer. These works employ religious and mythological imagery in distinctive poetic ways, rather than presenting a single inherited doctrine.