Entrance

Rilke placed the poem first in the collection, The Book of Pictures, likely intending it as a literal entrance into the poems the reader is about to engage with, providing his own suggestion for not only how poetry comes into being but also how one might best approach reading it. He seems to suggest right at the beginning that poetry is not the exclusive preserve of the few; it is a way of being (and of reading) that can be cultivated. This is why he begins the poem with the phrase “Whoever you are” and repeats it exactly in the fourth line, which is noticeably shorter than the others and contains only this phrase. The poet is happy not to define his audience; he is not speaking to a particular group of poets or a small coterie but to anyone who is open, receptive, and curious.

The image of the person (or people) to whom the poem is addressed—going outside at night, leaving the comfort of their room—is a potent one. It suggests that a poet must be prepared to leave his or her comfort zone behind, because if the mind remains stuck in a familiar routine, seeing things in the same old way, it will only know staleness and limitation (a notion that is stated more explicitly in Lines 5-6).