This paper investigates the work of poet and theorist Michel Deguy from the point of view of his understanding of the question of technique in the contemporary world. Retracing Deguy's steps, it notes that nature as a topic gradually recedes into the background, thus opening the way to the scrutiny of divers figures of technical "progress", which then lead to the emergence of geopolitical, cultural and poetical issues. Even though they appear virtually throughout his work, these figures are to be found most forcefully in Le spleen de Paris (2001), a title that significantly points to the roots of the subject in Baudelaire. There, urban traffic (cars, pedestrians, bikers) acquire a political-poetical dimension and its rhetoric helps one grasp the fashion in which the author conceives of the "humanist" sense of poetry.
French poetry; Michel Deguy; technique; humanism