SPORT

I consider poetry to be the sport of thinking and a poem a sportive act.

Henri Pichette



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PRAYER (2)

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 one stop towards praying.

Bernard Halda



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STOP

Poetry is one stop towards praying.

Bernard Halda



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RHUMB

Poetry is the fifth rhumb.

Jan Greshof



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NATURE (3)

Poetry is knowledge, redemption, power, surrender. The poetic activity which is capable of changing the world is by nature a revolutionary force; as an exercise of the mind it's a method to inner liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another one.

Octavio Paz



The artist must copy what is inside the object, that which exercises its action by the intermediary of the form and figure and addresses itself to us by means of symbols: the spirit of Nature.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge



Nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Friedrich Schiller



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FLAME

Nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Friedrich Schiller



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CONTENT (2)

Observation of any kind is, like argument in prose, properly previous to the act of the poem, and, if allowed in, must be so juxtaposed, apposed, set in, that it does not, for an instant, sap the going energy of the content towards its form.

Charles Olsen (From: Projective Verse, 1950)
(sent by Bert Bevers)


Each memorable verse of a true poet has twice or three times the written content.

Alfred de Musset


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SOLDIER (2)

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.

Eli Khamarov


Only three beings deserve our respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.


Charles Baudelaire




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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry


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CHURCH

For me a poem acts like a church used to do: creating a space for introspection. Poems must not convince me. They sow uneasy feelings, a certain restlesness. One should experience insomnia because of a poem for some time.

Luc Huyse


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WORD-PLAY

Most poetry borrows its characteristics -what we experience as 'poetic'- from images that are au fond word-plays.

Benno Barnard


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PARIS

A part of the year I live in Paris, but I hardly have any contact with French literary circles. I have always regarded contemporary French poetry as narcistic. As if Paris would be the centre of universe.

Breyten Breytenbach


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EQUATION

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.

Ezra Pound


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SPIRIT

The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.

Ted Hughes



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HATE

Today I hate all poetry. I long for a businesslike and speculative parlando. No magic tricks, no pulling out all the stops with sounds, no concealed music; talking in myself, as if someone is sitting here beside me; the peaceful musing in the loneliness of a sleeping house. Beleaving in the honesty of this.

Leonard Nolens



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CIRCUMSTANCE

Communication belongs to the essence of poetry and is by no means an incidental circumstance.

Ida Gerhardt



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COPY

The artist must copy what is inside the object, that which exercises its action by the intermediary of the form and figure and addresses itself to us by means of symbols: the spirit of Nature.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge



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SS

Reading poems by Lucebert I get the feeling the SS has marched right into poetry.

Bertus Aafjes



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EXPRESSION (3)

First of all it is a delight when you compose a poem or a collection of poetry and can see that the material, initially indistinct, by words and images is developed into something full of expression.

Doina Ioanid



Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

W.H. Auden (1907 - 1973)



Form is never more than an expression of content.

Charles Olson



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NAVEL-GAZING

Game and reality: I believe the tension between these two elements is required to write poetry. What one experiences, feels, should get another dimension than just autobiographical facts, should become that other reality. What would poetry otherwise be than indulging in navel-gazing?

Roger Nupie



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REGULATIONS

Poetry can't be regulated: if it comes, it does come. And when it comes, she takes over.

Lucienne Stassaert



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ORDER

Prose = words in their best order; — poetry = the best words in the best order.


Samuel Taylor Coleridge


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INSTINCT

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Socrates


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SOMETIMES

I have said what I have seen and felt // in order to be loved, sometimes, after I'll have gone.

Anna de Noailles




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QUALITY

The poem has elements of melodrama. All art that has endured has a quality we call schmaltz or corn.

Richard Hugo (from 'The triggering town')
Thank you, Karleen Koen



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FLEEING

I would like to see that poetry flees as soon as someone believes to be able to find the secret of the poem. Talking about poetry leads to misunderstandings. One can only write about poetry wíth poetry.

Leo Herberghs
(Sent by Bert Bevers)



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www.bertbevers.com

ESSENTIALS

I think poets should not be allowed to publish more than three poetry books in their entire life. In that case only books would appear which really give the feeling to be the barest essentials.

Maud Vanhauwaert



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PEARL

Prose consists of just words, poems however form a string of pearls.
Ali Nur ed-Din



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OASIS

Trust is an oasis in the heart, which can never be reached by the caravans of rationalism.

Khalid Gibran



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AWARENESS

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.

Allen Ginsberg



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LIFE

The poet is essentially sensitive to the life of his time.

Stephen Spender


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NOTES

Just like there are songs without words, there is poetry without notes.

Erhard Blanck



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SALVATION

Heaven's prayers and Mary's merged to a far eternity that was speaking to me. From then on I kept hearing poetry's voice as if coming from depths behind our temporariness. It connects the races of mankind. It reveals the essence of our life. It uplifts our eyes above the appearance of things. It allows us to look into the spectacle of salvation itself.

Anton van Duinkerken



Sent by Bert Bevers
www.alberthagenaars.nl

SNOW

Snow. Finally we can write poems on car windows again.

Loesje



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ORE

I become ore, quarried by no one.

Frank Pollet



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REASON

'Therefore' is a word the poet should not know.

André Gide



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PHENOMENON

Poetry can say it's raining when actually the sun is shining and also that it's nice weather when it is raining; poetry says things about phenomena which are not directly perceptible. It's precisely because of this, one is constrained to see things one normally doesn't see.

Ray Queneau



Sent by Bert Bevers
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FEELINGS

Writing poetry is mixing feelings with reality.

Ben Moudhi



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CONTRACTION

The poet is a world, contracted in one person.

Victor Hugo



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AHEAD

The poet doesn't go ahead with things, the things go ahead with him.

Bert Schierbeek



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MIRROR

Poetry must be the worldly mirror of Divinity, and reflect, by colours, sounds and rhythms, all beauty of the universe.

Madame de Staël (De l'Allemagne)



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NOTHING

A human being hardly knows wat a human being is. The poet knows everything of nothing.

Jan Elburg



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REMAINS

It's the poet's task to preserve 'the remains' in 'the word', in spite of all opposition, incomprehension and being kept under wraps.

Claude van de Berge



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SIZE

Size is the unity one uses to measure relations. And, of course, there's always tension -as well in art as in one's personal life and society- between order and freedom. That's how we stay focused. In order to express this contradiction poetically, nothing is more fit than the two most beautiful figures of speech: symmetry and paradox.

Renaat Ramon



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SILENCE (4)

Poetry is a heightened form of keeping silent.

Norbert De Beule



Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Charles Simic



A poem doesn't only consist of words - it consists of words and their silence.

Martinus Nijhoff



Words may only serve to improve the silence.

Karel Jonckheere



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SECRET

The poet reveals secrets without betraying them.

Jan Greshof



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SUBJECT

Poetry is the subject of the poem. From this the poem issues and to this returns. Between the two, between issue and return, there is an absence in reality, things as they are.

Wallace Stevens



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REDEMPTION

Poetry is knowledge, redemption, power, surrender. The poetic activity which is capable of changing the world is by nature a revolutionary force; as an exercise of the mind it's a method to inner liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another one.

Octavio Paz



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AMBITION

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

Robert Adamson



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INFORMATION

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

E. M. Forster



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UNNAMEABLE

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Salman Rushdie



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DICTIONARY

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Steven wright



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MISPRINT

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Oscar Wilde



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