News at Eleven: But how can "beings fully realized" be

fashioned from language? It was this question that provoked [Rainer Maria] Rilke to delve more deeply into his subjects, to release the invisible being in them the way Michelangelo "freed" the angel in the stone by carving. Though they are known as his "thing-poems," what is original about them is that their still lifes are dynamic; it's as if Rilke translates the seemingly random movement of their atoms. In "Archaic Torso of Apollo" the torso "burns," the gaze "holds fast and shines," the breast is a "surge," the slightly twisting loins make a "smile."

from The Nation: Angels to Radios: On Rainer Maria Rilke

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