From the HAT files:

The Bowl of Roses is so beautiful; it couldn't possibly begin with something so raw like flaring anger between two fighting boys. How does that connect with roses? Perhaps Rilke tacked on the first two stanzas after finishing the rest of the poem. No. Impossible. It exists/begins with the truest, most primal expressions of human nature, of self-containing which extends outward "to change the world outside." But does that make sense? How can we begin with two boys "baring their teeth" and progress towards a bowl of rose "unforgettable and filled"? It is full of the "utmost of being and bending" so is that the connection between the two images? I don't know... perhaps it is not just the sense of being but the branching out into space "where adjacent things diminish."

I am curious what "it" in the last line stands for... It lies "carefree in these open roses." Does this refer to the "self-containment" which actually means reaching out to touch everything outside in the world and having that influence reach back into a "hand full of inwardness"? Is this a Buddhist notion of the karmic circle in which all things exist within all things, and everything touches each other with the potential to become each other, or at least a part of each other? The roses are aware of themselves. They are full of their self-knowledge. In achieving that, they become aware of everything else, because everything else is a part of them -- it is all connected.

These are strange interpretations of and ruminations on Rilke, but somehow, I feel they gesture toward the definition of poetry, and the role of a poet. There is something universal about attaining awareness of individuality. It's contradictory to say we create unity by identifying what it means or how it means to be alone, in pain, insecure. We all share that. Perhaps that's why Orpheus and his pain resonate so strongly with us all. It is universal or far-reaching because it is so acute and so self-containing. We experience it all...? That's why poetry, for some, resonates so intensely...

- Excerpted from Reflections over Rilke's selected poems, pulled from HAT files