Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926), German lyric poet. His complex, symbolic poetry is preoccupied with spiritual questioning about God and death, as in the Book of Hours (1905) and New Poems (1907–8). The poems in his later Duino Elegies (1923) and the Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) are considered his finest work.