Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
This is the second post in a series on Martin Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking? Please read the first post, Why We’re Not Truly Thinking. And the third post, The Call to Thought: When Life Forces Us to Truly Think.
Why Poetry Is More Than Just an Art Form
For Martin Heidegger, poetry wasn’t just an art form or a genre in literature—it was a way of thinking.
Poetry, for him, was the necessary antidote for calculative thinking that had come to dominate almost every aspect of modern life.
It is a refuge for meditative thinking.
Poetry is one of the last remaining places that resists the modern world’s obsession with control, efficiency, and optimization. We live in a time where language is increasingly reduced to information, commands, and persuasion.
Poetry preserves something essential and something much deeper, the ability to dwell in Being as opposed to dissecting it.
Poetry Cannot Be Reduced—And That’s the Point
Poetry’s very essence as an art object is its refusal to be reduced to a mere tool.
While it, at times—depending on the poet—seeks clarity, precision, and function, it, unlike scientific or technical language, cannot be summarized or reduced to its essential parts.
In an explanation of a poem, the poem is lost.
Poetry doesn’t seek to explain but to reveal.
It doesn’t seek to simplify but demands an engagement.
Because of the power of the lyric, poetry is the purest form of meditative thinking, which forces us to slow down and resist quick conclusions, listening to language as something that is alive.
For Heidegger, language plays an essential role in his thinking, which is why he prioritizes poetry as a mode to engage meditative thinking. He says: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.”
What he means here is that language isn’t just a tool for communication as traditionally thought, but that it is the thing that shapes our entire relationship with reality.
How we speak, the words we use, and even the structure of our language itself determine how we will experience the world.
But for Heidegger, language must operate in depth.
Think of his insistence on the recovery of terms going back to the pre-Socratics—he’s convinced that ontology has misrepresented a word like ‘being’ since Plato in Being and Time.
Equally perverse is the treatment of a word like ‘truth.’
Heidegger sees our modern treatment of language as a stripping of its depth because it has been used as a tool for speed, utility, and control.
Think of how science treats language as a tool to dissect and categorize—words must be stripped of ambiguity.
Think of how corporate culture manipulates language, calling our coworkers our “family.”
Even in our everyday language, we navigate the world using words that have become transactional—designed to deliver information rather than invoke deeper thought.
Again, for Heidegger in What Is Called Thinking?, all of this is necessary—it allows us to build the world.
But poetry acts against this stripping of depth.
It does not define—it unconceals.
It does not command—it calls, if we listen.
It forces us to experience words differently, allowing meaning to emerge in the world rather than meaning being imposed on the world.
How Technology Has Hollowed Out Language
Think of how the internet and social media have changed our relationship to language.
Most of the information on the internet rewards consuming it like data—we skim things looking to extract just enough meaning to move on.
Look at this blog post itself. If I were presenting this as an article for publication in a magazine, the very structure would be different—full paragraphs would replace the single sentences, and there would be no subheadings.
But because the medium shapes how we experience the world, the blog post is structured so we can skim it easily.
This encapsulates Heidegger’s issue—technology itself reduces the world to a collection of resources to be used.
Language becomes data to be mined for information—so it starts to become precise, clear, and functional.
Language becomes a weapon to provoke action—so it becomes manipulative in advertising or provocative in the media.
In all these cases, modernity has stripped language of depth.
It has to, in order for functionality.
But poetry breaks this pattern.
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Poetry as the Last Refuge of Meditative Thinking
To be clear, Heidegger’s defense of poetry isn’t about aesthetics or enjoyment—it is simply about reclaiming a lost mode of thinking: meditative thinking.
In poetry, language can become an event that allows for the call of thinking to be heard, rather than a tool of communication.
The reason why poetry is uniquely positioned for meditative thinking is because it cannot be reduced to bullet points or summarized.
Once we do this, we lose it as poetry.
Poetry resists interpretation.
Poetry resists being controlled or mastered.
Great poetry remains open in its multiplicity of meanings.
Because of this, poetry forces an encounter with mystery—meaning cannot be given in a poem; it must be encountered.
A novel, no matter how well written, cannot do what a poem can.
Sure, the author may play with language, but because of the underlying structure, it can still be summarized.
But we cannot summarize a sonnet by reducing it to its parts.
For Heidegger, this is not just an intellectual exercise—it is an existential necessity.
To engage with poetry is to step outside the calculative mindset and return to a meditative thinking that demands openness to wonder.
If this resonates, dive deeper into The Poetics of Fulfillment—a field guide for those restless for more than fleeting happiness. Not quick fixes, but lasting meaning. If you crave depth over dopamine and want fulfillment that endures, this is your next step.
Read The Poetics of Fulfillment: Why Chasing Happiness Is Killing Your Fulfillment (And How to Stop)
The Call to Meditative Thinking: Why Poetry Matters
Because poetry slows us down and resists easy conclusions, it is the very thing that allows us to reconnect with a deeper reality that calculative thinking has obscured.
For Heidegger, thinking must call to one, and poetry is one of the last remaining paths that allows space for this call of true thinking because it is constructed around ambiguity of meaning and a depth of presence.
The meditative thinking found in poetry cannot be explained—it can only be experienced.
This type of thinking resists the telling of truth.
It is a truth that must be felt—a home that must be dwelt in.
Ready to burn your default thinking? Download Dangerous by Design. Discover the 10 books that fracture, interrupt, and rewire the creative mind. Get the guide & read dangerously.
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