The poems reflect Rilke's impressions of his environment, and experiences, which he sometimes confided to Lou Andreas-Salomé or Clara Westhoff in numerous letters with a great wealth of detail. They also describe his own influences in the objects of reality-oriented art. The poems also stand at the end of a long development process: A year after he completed the monograph on Rodin, he told Lou Andreas-Salomé how desperately he was looking for a craft-like foundation for his art, a tool that would give his art the necessary solidity. He excluded two possibilities: The new craft should not be the craft of language itself, but rather an attempt "to find a better understanding of inner life". Likewise, the humanistic way of education that Hugo von Hofmannsthal had undertaken, the foundation "to seek a well-inherited and increasing culture" did not appeal to him. The poetic craft should rather be seeing itself, the ability to "see better, to look with more patience, with more immersion."