In this talk, I will address aspects of temporality in poetics. I will argue, that temporality characterizes a certain use of poetics that seems to be the opposite of poetics as it ap- pears for example in literary theory. I will argue, however, that while feminist criticism sometimes use poetics as a means to oppose encompassing theoretical frameworks, it nevertheless integrates the traditional use of poetics since self-reflexivity is an important aspect here. In this regard, poetics rather emerges as a framework for thinking than a framework that defines thinking. In this sense poetics takes place in the contemporary, that is, in the making of theoretical and artistic practices. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss how the self-reflexive aspect unfolds in relation to the rejection of encompassing theoreti- cal frameworks in feminist criticism. In the second part of the talk, I will address the Ameri- can poet Lyn Hejinian’s notion of a poetics that is characterized as ”a thinking on”. This characterization is based on the stress on form in poetic language that Hejinian traces back to Russian formalism. I will claim, that this is another example of the temporal aspect of poetics, as this ”thinking on” takes place in the contemporary.