Abstract
The text is an introduction to a collective monograph on objects in poems. It provides a basic historical overview of poems in which objects appear from antiquity to the present, outlines various poetics of the object and conceptions of thingness, and introduces the chapters of the book.
The book is an English version of a previously published Czech edition, which did not include this preface. Some chapters have been omitted from the Czech version of the book, while others have been added and revised.