(p.109) [Extract from: What are Poets for?] - The whole objective inventory in terms of which the world appears is given over to, commended to, and thus subjected to the command of self-assertive production. Willing has in it the character of command; for purposeful self-assertion is a mode in which the attitude of the producing, and the objective character of the world, concentrate into an unconditional and therefore complete unity. In this self-concentration, the command character of the will announces itself. And through it in the course of modern metaphysics, the long-concealed nature of the long-since existing will as the Being...

(p.112) [Extract from: What are poets for? This extract in particular is discussing Rilke's poetry and emerges from a discussion on 'Americanism'] - In place of all the world-content of things that was formerly perceived and used to grant freely of itself, the object-character of technological dominion spreads itself over the earth ever more quickly, ruthlessly, and completely. Not only does it establish all things as producible in the process of production; it also delivers the products of production by means of the market. In self-assertive production, the humanness of man and the thingness of things dissolve into the calculated market...

(p.113) [Extract from: What are poets for?] - Among those beings, plants and beasts, too, none is under special protection, though they are admitted into the Open and secured in it. Man, on the other hand, as the being who wills him-self, not only enjoys no special protection from the whole of beings, but rather is unshielded (line 13). As the one who proposes and produces, he stands before the obstructed Open. He himself and his things are thereby exposed to the growing danger of turning into mere material and into a function of objectification. The design of self-assertion itself extends...

(p.115) [Extract from: What are poets for?] - But above all, technology itself prevents any experience of its nature. For while it is developing its own self to the full, it develops in the sciences a kind of knowing that is debarred from ever entering into the realm of the essential nature of technology, let alone retracing in thought that nature's origin. The essence of technology comes to the light of day only slowly. This day is the world's night, rearranged into merely technological day. This day is the shortest day. It threatens a single endless winter. Not only does protection...