 Besides interviewing past and present, some poems also engage with the gap between the past and its poetic figuration.Grünbein's works on Descartes’ philosophy and its significance for the poetic subjectivity have been praised by prominent critics and thinkers for their depth and remarkable style, "one capable of conducting powerful and original thought with no loss of lyric intensity", notices Don Paterson.George Steiner's opus magnum "The Poetry of Thought" (2011) is dedicated to "Durs Grünbein, poet and Cartesian".