Entrance

The poem is about the creative process and how one may enter it (hence the title “Entrance”). The speaker is himself a poet and is addressing everyone alike, both his fellow poets and readers. His aim is to present the act of poetic creation in a poem itself. (Poetry that is about poetry in this way is sometimes called meta-poetry.) It suggests that the act of creating a poem or of reading one are similar, since the reader must bring to the poem qualities that resemble those the poet summoned up as he wrote it. Rilke once wrote to a young man who had asked his advice that the ability to be a creative artist, “comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquillity, as if eternity lay before them” (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Charlie Louth, p. 14). This advice seems to echo part of the process presented in “Entrance,” and indeed it was written in 1903, less than a year after the publication of the poem. The process as described in “Entrance” consists of several main elements, each of which may be considered a theme of the poem.