After visiting my local library I chanced upon a book of poems by the Bohemian poet, Rilke. As I am currently on a mission to familiarize myself with as many poets as I can, I took out the book and read a few of the poems.
At first glance, I wasn't too impressed. Rilke's early poems seemed to be over-written Romantic depictions of nature and religion. Further on in the book though, I found a poem called 'The Panther' and when I read it I felt a certain kinship between me and Rilke. I felt as if I was looking at 'the thousand bars' of the panther's cage and I sympathized with the notion of 'no more world'.
Though the poem is but only four lines by three stanzas long and has a simple (predictable?) AB rhyme scheme, I felt this was sufficient in enabling close visualization of captivity and the emotive response. The poem itself was a turning point in Rilke's career, he was advised by his friend Ronin (the famous artist): 'to keep on looking at something till you're able to make a poem out of it'. This proved to be good advice as the poem feels like an eternity of incarceration with its comma-broken lines and Rilke has clearly stared long and hard at his subject, the panther in captivity to create a short haunting poem that has influenced a myriad Observationists.
You can find a copy of 'The Panther' in the Penguin Classics edition of Selected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
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