This article deals with the debate about the poet’s engagement in and between the literary journals that flourished in France during the Second World War. Despite many disagreements, they all tend to emphasize the poet’s role in history. The famous definition of the writer’s engagement by Sartre doesn’t account for the conception of poetry they generally advocate. The sheer fact of writing and publishing poetry is an act of résistance in occupied France. The political dimension of poetry derives from the ontological questioning it expresses. This conception of poetry still influences major French poets such as Guillevic or André Frénaud after the war, thus challenging the dominant view on modern poetry, which is supposedly characterized by hermetism.
