We live in the age of the poem. Poetry is more successful than ever, and some of the best authors of an entire generation are poets. In this radical essay, Christian Metz explores why and investigates what the hallmarks of today’s poetry are. Contemporary poetry, he argues, is driven by the profound changes of our age to force a poetic mode of thought: thinking with the tools of poetry, which gives us the room for passion, for play, and for sensual experience of the world. Metz systematically introduces the reader to this poetic thinking. Taking their similarities as a starting point, he follows some of this new poetry’s most significant authors— Monika Rinck and Jan Wagner, Uljana Wolf and Steffen Popp—into their poetic worlds. Eve- rything, in short, you always wanted to know about modern poetry, but were afraid to ask.
