SHOWER

A poem is a good place to have a shower.

Philippe Cailliau



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BELIEF

No, the poet doesn't believe in anything. He would like to believe. It's through the poem he hopes to believe in something. Certainties in these poems are to be considered hope or wishes. The poem itself believes. But something which renders the poem credible, doesn't have to be that for the maker. Look: you don't write poems about things that are obvious for you. Then they would just become little tracts. A poem tries, follows a path, is something you don't know for yourself, or something you don't believe in yet. In that sense a poem shapes its creator. After each succesful poem he has become a different person.

C.O. Jellema, talking about his book 'Ongeroepen'.



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CRAFTSMANSHIP

What one admires in good poetry, is craftsmanship. Poets don't look at each other for some philosophical meaning they give to life but they look at technical skills. Workmanship of the medium, that is what can be appreciated with others.

Derek Walcott


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WEATHER

A poem is yesterday's weather report for tomorrow's reader.

Philippe Cailliau


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FREEDOM (2)

Freedom lies in being bold.

Robert Frost (1874 -1963)



The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.

Jim Morrison (1943 - 1971)



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JOKE

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you’ve lost the whole thing.

W.S. Merwin



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ORGANISM

A poem needs to have a centre of gravity, there must be axes and structures, like in a snow crystal; or put it differently: a poem should have the structure of a flower. It is an organism.

Ida Gerhardt (1905 - 1997)


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