NUMBERS

The poem rewrites itself
it can't speak
just letters becoming words
like digits a number

Richard Foqué


www.alberthagenaars.nl
http://richardfoque.blogspot.nl

STAMMERING

Poetry wants to say something to us but what it is she wants to say remains hidden, although we feel its presence. It is not vague, on the contrary, it's quite concrete what poems do with us. That’s what makes poetry attractive and therefore I’m inclined to dedicate myself to this higher form of stammering.

Hans Dekkers



www.alberthagenaars.nl

PROTECTION (2)

One has to protect poetry from the poets, because it is the most precious asset we possess.

Marnix Gijsen (1899 - 1984)



The openess of poems, their ambiguity and complexity must be protected. If you try to explain the poem, you frame it. You fixate. Why would you do that?

Mustafa Stitou



www.alberthagenaars.nl

ART

The nice thing about art, so about poetry as well, is that everyone is entitled to abuse it.

Kees Fens



www.alberthagenaars.nl

RELIGION

Poetry is the natural language of all religions.

Germaine de Stael



www.alberthagenaars.nl

ROAD

There are many roads leading to poetry - each real poet clears his own path.

Anestis Evangelou



www.alberthagenaars.nl

INTIMACY

It's much more intimate to read poetry with someone than to sleep together.

Tania De Metsenaere



wwww.alberthagenaars.nl

STREET

Real poetry walks down the street. What a pity so many poets are looking for it in the clouds.

Alphonse de Lamartine



www.alberthagenaars.nl

PENCIL

Each word you want to keep silent I silence back to you with my pencil.

Hilde Keteleer



www.alberthagenaars.nl

LINE

When I have a final line in mind
I try to write a poem with it
and when I have a first line
it may become a story

sometimes I just have a line.

Frans Mink



www.alberthagenaars.nl

IDEA (2)

Ideas have nothing to do with poetry, what counts is what can't be said.

Max Jacob



I am and will always be A POET and, inflexible, I have always preferred the visual aspects, the ideas, paintings, and the poetry present in them.
Hans Clavin



Also see:
Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

PREDICTABILITY

Because nothing is predictable, everything
is realized in what is written.

Paul Rigolle



www.alberthagenaars.nl

TRANSLATING (4)

The best translation is not that which is most like the original but which is the most different from it.

G. Bradford



Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

Leonard Cohen



Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Robert Frost



What is lost in a good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel



www.alberthagenaars.nl

CONSCIOUSNESS

Poetry acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness.

Percy Bysshe Shelley


www.alberthagenaars.nl

BODY

A room without books is like a body without soul.

Cicero



www.alberthagenaars.nl

DEATH (3)

Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.

John Ashberry



There are some dead who are more alive than the living.

Jean-Christophe Romain Rolland


A man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.

Homer



www.alberthagenaars.nl