Inviting a poet to give a lecture on poetics is about as sensible as hiring a cannibal as a nutritionist. In the end, he will gnaw on your bones, in this case, the remnants of your intellectual support structure, warned Robert Menasse at the beginning of his poetics lectures in the spring of 2005 in the legendary Adorno lecture hall, where there had not been such a powerful denunciation of capitalism and calls for revolution in a long time. The audience thanked him with thunderous applause and standing ovations.