Archaic Torso of Apollo (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I was really looking for a short, sweet poem that I could sum up in a quickly worded paragraph and call it a night. And when I found this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke I thought I'd found just that. I was going to mention how I was certain the named poet was female (I mean, Maria?) and then I was going to go on about how this sonnet is an ekphrasis. How you get a good sense of the power of the statue and how even the unfinished can have such great power. I had it mostly written in my head by the time I was more than half done reading it. And then, he had to go and show what a masterful poet he is by not only nailing an ekphrasis, but a modern sonnet as well by including that killer of a turn.

And I mean wow! The last two lines shocked me. They broke me from my placid reading and made me stutter ..... what the what was I just reading?!? I quickly restarted.

This poem is fantastic. It's technically impeccable. It's cool and statuesque in the first 12 lines. It mirrors its subject. But then with the last two lines, it turns. Not only the poem, but the whole subject. It's not truly about the statue of Apollo. It's about you, the reader. You see the art. Well, the art sees you right back - "for here there is no place / that does not see you."

An ekphrasis poem is about you. Any poem is about you. Any art's subject reflects you. "You must change your life." You must. Art depends on it.

Favorite line: "You must change your life."