How do Germanophone contemporary writers conceive of their poetry in relation to their proper lives and experiences? Comparing two cycles of poems from the beginning of the years 2000 dealing with invasive medical treatments their empirical authors supposedly have undergone themselves – Ulrike Draesner’s „bläuliche sphinx (metal)“ on a missed abortion and Thomas Kling’s „Gesang von der Bronchoskopie“ on a biopsy of the lungs –, this paper explores how poetic language is used to shape and to offer experiences that are staged as escaping entire translation into linguistic propositions, thus claiming a kind of ‘complementary knowledge’ that is conceived as exclusively conveyed, or rather generated, by poetry.

Can we learn something from poetry? Can poems convey to their readers insight, knowledge, orientation, understanding or even wisdom? The paper assumes that general answers to these questions are possible but often lacking in substance. Instead, it is worthwhile to consider (a) different types of cognitive achievements and (b) sub-genres of poetry to which specific cognitive achievements have been attributed in certain aesthetic traditions as well as in literary criticism. For this purpose, the paper introduces a modern descriptive vocabulary for various types of cognitive significance and advocates an orientation to the concept of “knowledge” instead of more vague terms like “insight” or “understanding”. In a second step, the paper deals with three sub-genres of lyric poetry, whose cognitive value has repeatedly been claimed in aesthetic traditions as well as in literary studies: “didactic poetry”, “philosophical poetry” (Germ. „Gedankenlyrik“) and “poetry of moods”. By means of concrete examples, the paper shows how each of the three sub-genres privileges a certain type of cognitive significance or a certain “mechanism” of knowledge communication. In a third step, the paper points out which basic features of poetry, such as fictionality, argumentativeness, and literariness, are essential and which are irrelevant to the different types of cognitive significance. Finally, the paper discusses (a) whether the three sub-genres of lyric poetry can be defined without reference to their cognitive functions and (b) whether it would be more appropriate to postulate corresponding practices of reading lyric poetry that are linked but not restricted to these sub-genres of lyric poetry and therefore can basically be applied to every poem.

Evaluation in lyrical poetry is mostly uncharted territory, although subgenres such as panegyric or elegy suggest that it has a rich tradition. This contribution proposes a definition of evaluation in lyrical poetry and explores possible forms and functions of such evaluations in selected examples. The analyses suggest that contemporary poetry, although it may be full of evaluative expressions, provides few clues to the actual object of evaluation or the axiology of evaluation, which makes evaluation in poetry appear vague, incomplete or enigmatic. Despite this tendency towards vagueness, evaluation in poetry may help to convey knowledge to its recipients. Among others, poems by Erika Burkart, Daniela Danz and Wulf Kirsten will demonstrate that evaluation may serve as an enhancement of represented experiences, in particular by tapping into a phenomenological knowledge of ‘what-it-feels-like’ to be in such and such a situation.

This article examines the features of cognition gained through poetic creativity. First, three aspects of the theoretical considerations of Russian poet Olʼga Sedakova are considered: the attributes of the poetic state, the subject of poetical creation and of poetical reception, and the relationship of poetical creation and mystical experience. Second, parallels to her literary work are demonstrated in an overview, but also discussed in a concrete analysis of one of her poems («Vzgljad kota»). It is shown that Sedakova is entangled in contradictions in her theoretical work because she reproduces the openness and ambiguity of poetic writing in her theoretical texts. Finally, it is demonstrated that the poetic state can be characterized on the basis of her theoretical and poetical work as non-propositionally, founded in a pre-conscious mental structure, and can be qualified with Leibniz’ concept of the cognitio clara et confusa.

The ability of poetry – on the basis of its generic capability to bring together playfulness and awareness, an anticipated future (Ahnung) and the present – has had consequences for the history of German poetry insofar as poetry could function as a seismograph of tectonic shifts in times of societal crisis. Such was the case in the 1980s, when the East German state entered a phase of agony and there was ever more apparent disquiet in society. Multiple moments of consolidation shaped the poetry of the GDR which ought to be investigated for its epistemological potential: first, the return of political “poems for the times” (Zeitgedichte) in satirical diagnoses, second, poetic anticipation in accumulated collections of surreal visual constructs in poetry and the emphasis of grotesque effects, third, the exorbitant adventure to bring to life a space of thought and language beyond authoritarian surveillance – that is, the ambition to free the diffuse, the Proteus-esque, the marginalized, and the secretive from ossified discourse structures. A fourth tendency further resides in the historical-philosophically grounded self-determination of position and reassurance (Standortbestimmung und Vergewisserung) in poetry. Repeatedly these are bound to decided rejections of every kind of teleological progress, at times with apocalyptic scenarios. Premonition and anticipated knowledge intertwine when, for example, Volker Braun foresees the fall of the Berlin Wall in a poem written in 1988.