Ever since Plato’s Socrates exiled the poets from the ideal city in The Republic, Western thought has insisted on a strict demarcation between philosophy and poetry. Yet might their long-standing quarrel hide deeper affinities? This book explores the distinctive ways in which twentieth-century and contemporary continental thinkers have engaged with poetry and its contribution to philosophical meaning making, challenging us to rethink how philosophy has been changed through its encounters with poetry.

In wide-ranging reflections on thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Irigaray, Badiou, Kristeva, and Agamben, among others, distinguished contributors consider how different philosophers encountered the force and intensity of poetry and the negotiations that took place as they sought resolutions of the quarrel. Instead of a clash between competing worldviews, they figured the relationship between philosophy and poetry as one of productive mutuality, leading toward new modes of thinking and understanding. Spanning a range of issues with nuance and rigor, this compelling and comprehensive book opens new possibilities for philosophical poetry and the poetics of philosophy.

1. The Agonizing Agon: Meditations on a Conjugality, by Ranjan Ghosh
2. As the World Turns: Heidegger and the Origin of Poetry, by Georges Van Den Abbeele
3. Benjamin’s Baudelaire, by Lutz Koepnick
4. Georges Bataille and the Hatred of Poetry, by Roland Végső
5. Voicing Thought: Arendt, Poetry, and Philosophy, by Cecilia Sjöholm
6. Language and the Poetic Word in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, by James Risser
7. “I Am a Poem, Not a Poet”: Jacques Lacan’s Philosophy of Poetry, by Jean- Michel Rabaté
8. Adorno: Poetry After Poetry, by Thomas H. Ford
9. Sartre and Poetry: Je t’aime, moi non plus (I Love You—Me Neither), by Francois Noudelmann
10. Levinas and the Poetical Turn of Being, by Raoul Moati
11. The Intoxicated Conversation: Maurice Blanchot and the Poetics of Critical Masks, by Daniel Rosenberg Nutters and Daniel T. O’Hara
12. Merleau- Ponty, Ponge, and Valéry on Speaking Things: Phenomenology and Poetry, by Galen Johnson
13. Deleuze and Poetry, by Claire Colebrook
14. Irigaray’s Breath, or Poetry After Poetics, by Anne Emmanuelle Berger
15. On the Persistence of Hedgehogs, by Leslie Hill
16. What Are Philosophers For in the Age of the Poets? Badiou with and Against Heidegger, by Bruno Bosteels
17. Jean- Luc Nancy: Poetry, Philosophy, Technicity, by Ian James
18. Rancière on Poetry, by Jean- Philippe Deranty
19. Desire Against Discipline: Kristeva’s Theory of Poetry, by Carol Mastrangelo Bové
20. Agamben and Poetry, by Justin Clemens
List of Contributors
Index