Including the Present Mire: Hans Magnus Enzensberger and the Boundaries of Poetry

Beginning with an initial reflection on the boundaries of poetry and other genres of verbal discourse in the contemporary environment, this article turns to the work of the German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929-2022) to investigate how his poetry can contribute to repositioning and re-dimensioning some important issues about the boundaries between the poetic and the non-poetic. To do so, the article relies on a close reading of his poem “Homage to Gödel”.

Keywords:
contemporary poetry; essay; philosophy; Hans Magnus Enzensberger