ROBERT ANKER

As soon as a poem becomes considerably longer than a page, it loses concentration: more beacons, less open spaces, more univocal, more epic, more linear.



www.alberthagenaars.nl

GOTTFRIED BENN (1886 - 1956) 2

Art: the ashes of the mind.



The poem is ready before it has come into existence; it's just that the author doesn't know his tekst yet.


www.alberthagenaars.nl

DEREK WALCOTT (2)

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.



I believe in everyone who can deal with caesura in poems. Who can handle rhythm, is able to give a poem any form.



www.alberthagenaars.nl

C.O. JELLEMA (1936 - 2003)

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.

Jellema, talking about his book 'Ongeroepen'.



www.alberthagenaars.nl

JAN EIJKELBOOM (2)

When I write about difficult issues in a poem, I end up in a rigid form as a matter of course; it otherwise will get out of hand.



Writing poetry means to me: victory. Blood.


Jan Eijkelboom



www.alberthagenaars.nl

IDA GERHARDT (2)

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.



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



www.alberthagenaars.nl