Milan Rakic is generally recognized as one of the greatest Serbian poets of the twentieth century. He is particularly noted for introducing to the region a new versification imported from western Europe as well as for a series of patriotic poems he wrote about Kosovo, an emotionally symbolic region in Serbian culture and history.

Though Rakic's poetic career began well before World War I and arguably peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, he is considered part of the vanguard of poets who imposed a modern literary movement on Yugoslavia between the two world wars. During this period many Serbian writers, including Rakic, were members of Yugoslavia's foreign service, perhaps a reflection of the leisured diplomatic life of that time. Also characteristic of many of these poets was that they sought inspiration and spent their formative years abroad. Rakic traveled beyond his native Serbia to Paris...