Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
"Archaic Torso" isn't alone—Rilke wrote a whole bunch of so-called "thing poems" or "object poems," collected in his New Poems (1908). (Source.)
Some of Rilke's most famous poems are known together as the Duino Elegies. He began to write them while staying the Duino Castle on the Italian Adriatic coast (yeah, tough life). (Source.)
This guy was a big fan of art, especially sculpture. He even worked for a time as the secretary for the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. (Source.)