NOTHING (2)

The poem doesn’t know anything, proclaims nothing, preaches nothing and teaches nothing. It can’t be used for any useful purpose whatsoever, it’s doesn’t serve to embellish life, it gives no worldly wisdom. It is good for nothing, it has worth in itself. It doesn’t replace anything, it doesn’t inform. The poem is in a state of zero gravity and yet carries weight. It is nothing and nevertheless entails all.


Leo Herberghs





Poetry makes nothing happen.


W.H. Auden


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

OPAQUE

A poet shouldn't flatter through familiarity. Aristotle already knew that the poetic must have something inexplicable, something opaque.


José De Poortere


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

LIGHTNING

Poetry is a vertical lightning strike, the novel is a horizontal, never-ending line.


Victor van Vriesland


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

EARTH (4)

A poem / that understands itself and purely / encompasses itself like a figure of speech / with a ball and with air // and then takes flight because / of so little earth—I gladly / let it ascend to heaven. By preference // including the poet himself.

Frank Pollet





The poet's word is the entire world. Not the tangible earth, not the fluid water, but the earth inside the earth and the water that makes the water fluid.


Paul Snoek





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





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


Ben Cami





www.alberthagenaars.nl


Also see:
Frozen poets - Statues, tombs and other traces of hundreds of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry

INTUITION

What turns a verse into a poem is precisely the sense of inner necessity with which intuition unfolds, in sharp contrast to the deliberate intent with which one undertakes an experiment.


Hendrik de Vries


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

TECHNOLOGY

Technique can be just as poetic as poetry is technical.


Albert Hagenaars (inspired by Frans van Tilborg)


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

DICHTER

'Dichter', the German word for poet, is often an honorific title. It can be given to a writer who has written nothing but prose and no verse at all.


James Reidel


Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

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

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl