MECHANISM

A poem is a mechanism consisting of signs, sounds, images and symbols, which turns into an organism getting hold of you as soon as you recognize the beauty, truth and enigma's that are already in you.

Albert Hagenaars


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FOE

I want to reach everybody with my poetry. Poetry doesn't know friend or foe.

Rendra


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EXPLORER

The poet shouldn't try to become well-known or popular. It's best he keeps his poems in the dark, waiting to be discovered by explorers.

Daam Noppe


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PLANT

Poetry is like a plant which is detached from its cause and creator, a natural organism, a flower.

D.A.M. Binnendijk


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CALLIGRAPHY

The poet and the calligrapher find each other in the respect they demand for the word, for the letter, for the thin line of letter and character. Therefore alone the publication of a poetry collection may be called a therapeutic moment.

Jef Lambrecht


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LOSING

I don't lose if I write poetry about losing.

Erik Heyman


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HANDFUL

Is this enough: a handful of poems
to justify a life?

J.C. Bloem


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ENGINE

The heart is the engine of the poem.

Wim van Til



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READER

A poem always supposes a collaboration between poet and reader, a form of co-writing.

Toshimitsu Hasumi



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STONE

An accomplished poem is like a boulder. Compact, finished, complete. I'm in love with stones. One never gets ready watching such a withdrawn stone.

Maurice Gilliams


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POET (3)

For a poet lives everybody else's life
And dies everybody else's Death.

Jacob Israel de Haan


The poet and the calligrapher find each other in the respect they demand for the word, for the letter, for the thin line of letter and character. Therefore alone the publication of a poetry collection may be called a therapeutic moment.

Jef Lambrecht


The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Wallace Stevens


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ANIMAL (2)

Poetry is an animal, a combination
of the softest animals on earth.

Ben Cami


Poetry is an animal
that prowls around the house,
that doesn't jump through hoops.

Harrie Rouweler


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PRIEST (3)

The poet has nothing to tell, for he is writing from a world that he doesn’t know himself. That's the magic he pulls off. The modernist poet is a magician, but definitely not a priest.

Adriaan De Roover



The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Wallace Stevens



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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OPPOSITE

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by all, something that no one ever knew before. In poetry it is the opposite.

Paul Dirac


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CHEESE

The poets have always been mysteriously silent on the matter of cheese.

Gilbert Chesterton


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SPEAK

Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.

Plutarch


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PUBLISHER

I remember that my first manuscript was accepted by a publisher. Then I thought: ooooh, now I exist! It gave me something of myself.

Esther Jansma


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IRELAND

We Irish are too poetical to be poets.

Oscar Wilde



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STANDARDS

The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember literary standards.

T.S. Eliot



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THEORY

A poet is not a philosopher. He doesn't construct theories and in principle he dislikes abstractions.

A.L. Sötemann



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EPITAPH

Poems are not reversible in my view. Even more than of words poems consist of sequenses of silence. That's why poems are epitaphs. They survive us with the duration of a concession.

Roger M.J. de Neef



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INSPIRATION (2)

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


The poet is the one who inspires more than the one who gets inspired.
Paul Eluard



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WOOD

Writing poetry is producing a single leaf of all the woods on earth, producing a single ear of corn of all the grain fields on earth.

Herman van den Bergh



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FICTION

Poetry is no fiction. It is an expression of our own life, of our suffering, of our memory, of our view on the future. In poetry reality is no reference. Reality is poetry's own subject.

Antonio Gamoneda



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LOSS (3)

I don't lose if I write poetry about losing.

Erik Heyman



The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Elizabeth Bishop, from 'One Art'



I am quite humble
my world is not more beautiful
than a lost poem

Alain Bosquet



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ESTRANGEMENT

A good poem is a combination of estrangement and something that goes without saying. A good poem "works".

Hugo Brems


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CENTURY (2)

Poets don't survive the centuries thanks to their collected works in six volumes but because of what seeps through from these books in all kinds of anthologies. Unfortunately, most of this selection process is left to people who aren't good for anything else and, on second thoughts, even can't handle this noble art.

Bart Govaert



It's true, language is a fragile instrument, which explains why so few poems, robbed from the strenghtening soundboard of a similar sense of time, are able to push through the centuries. But it can also be enormously strong; the first task for the poet is to combine the power of feeling with the word.

J. Elema



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NEEDLE

Poetry is the sound of a needle falling into a haystack. Those who can't hear this are deaf.

Tony Rombouts



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SOUL

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

Eugenio Montale



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OBSERVATION

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



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FOLLOWERS

Poetry doesn’t like followers but loves lovers.

Federico García Lorca



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