Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) like his near-contemporary, W.B. Yeats (1865–1939),  modernized his poetry from the otherworldly “twilit” style of his early poems to the sharp-edged imageries of his late work. His New Poems (1907/08)—from which these departures derive—are widely praised as his first fully mature lyrics.