Abstract

This article investigates contemporary book poetry written in German against the backdrop of current discourses on digitalization, post-digitality, and disconnectivity in sociology, and media and literary studies. It discusses poems by Carla Cerda, Sirka Elspaß, Simone Kornappel, Tristan Marquard, Silke Scheuermann, and Ulf Stolterfoht, alongside poems by the text collective 0x0a, based on the poetry of Monika Rinck, as sometimes highly reflexive and advanced treatments of the (post-)digital present. A key focus is the question of how poetry engages with, reflects on, and potentially problematizes everyday networked experiences. The article shows, among other things, how some of the poets develop poetic devices to reveal hidden digital infrastructures and technologies. Finally, it explores the status of »book poetry« as a genre in this context in light of the fact that it is no longer the first option for publishing poetry. This is intensified when digitally generated poems (particularly those produced by AI) are printed in books as a post-digital strategy or »secondary analogization,« which raises new questions about the mediality and materiality of poetry.