JAN GRESHOF

Poetry is the fitfth rhumb.



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FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

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.


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HEINRICH HEINE

I am proud of never being rude to anyone on this planet, which contains a lot of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.


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BRENDAN BEHAN

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.


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ALFRED DE MUSSET

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

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ELI KHAMAROV

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

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PATRICK KAVANAGH (3)

A man innocently dabbles in words and rhymes and finds that it is his life.

Among your earthiest words, the angels stray...

He read me Whitman, of whom he was very fond, and also Emerson. I didn't like Whitman, and said so. I always thought him a writer who tried to bully his way to prophecy. Of Emerson at the time I had no opinions to offer. I found him out later to be a sugary humbug. His transcendental bunkum sickened me.


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BREYTEN BREYTENBACH (2)

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 the universe.


I don't believe meditating influences writing or painting. I do it because it stabilizes my daily life to some extent. Yet I think writing and especially painting are ways of meditation.



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BENNO BARNARD

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



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EZRA POUND

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.



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TED HUGHES

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.



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LEONARD NOLENS

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.



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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

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.



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BERTUS AAFJES

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


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DOINA IOANID

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.


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ROGER NUPIE

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?


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LUCIENNE STASSAERT (4)

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



While writing poetry I can't even bear a fly in my room.



Poetry is a linguistic dimension which is more physical than prose.



I'm terrorized while writing poetry. With prose I manage to keep more distance.



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MAUD VANHAUWAERT

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.


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RICHARD HUGO

When you start to write, you carry to the page one or two attitudes, though you may not be aware of it. One is that all music must conform to truth. The other, that all truth must conform to music. If you believe the first, you are making your job very difficult, and you are not only limiting the writing of poems to something done only by the very witty and clever, such as Auden, you are weakening the justification for creative-writing programs. So you can take that attitude if you want, but you are jeopardizing my livelihood as well as your chances of writing a good poem.

Found in 'The triggering town', sent by Mrs. Karleen Koen



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LEO HERBERGHS (2)

The poem doesn’t know anything, proclaims nothing, preaches nothing and teaches nothing. It can’t be used for any useful goal 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.

From: De dichter en het woord
Sent by Bert Bevers





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.

Sent by Bert Bevers



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ALI NUR ED-DIN

Prose consists of just words, poems however form a string of pearls.


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KHALIL GIBRAN (2)

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



Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.



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ALLEN GINSBERG

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



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ERHARD BLANCK

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



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JOSEPH JOUBERT

You will nowhere find poetry unless you bring some of it with you.



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MATSUO BASHO

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.



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STEPHEN SPENDER (2)

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



Poetry can ceate a world truer than the world of reality.



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LORD BYRON

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.



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RAYMOND QUENEAU

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.



Sent by Bert Bevers
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ANTON VAN DUINKERKEN (2)

All art is a sacrifice. As soon as selfishness rules, it corrupts the faculties. Only the harmonious poethood is great. Everything disharmonious disrupts the soul. This confronts the human being with his surroundings. The true poet knows what his inspiration is worth, also for others, whether they are listening or not. For him its not about an acknowledgement in the wavering opinion of a contemporary. He finds his certainties within himself. They are realized in his work.


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.



Sent by Bert Bevers
Translation: Albert Hagenaars


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DYLAN THOMAS (5)

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same, once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him..



Whenever the day is dull and the rain is falling and the feet of the heron are battering against my window, and whenever the Garnetts (who are a literary family) or the gannets (who I believe are a bird) are gossiping in the bay, then what do I do but count my beads and then: a volume of American verse edited by Oscar Williams! I suddenly have the death wish, which is what I started with. And then I have to read the poetry again and then I like it. And then it all begins again: the melancholy, gay, euphoric roundabout.



I am man's reply to every question,
His aim and destination.



Deary me I’d rather be a poet anyday and live on guile and beer.



I often covered more than a hundred sheets of paper with drafts, revisions, rewritings, ravings, doodlings & intensely concentrated work to construct a single vers.




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



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GUIDO GEZELLE (3)

No, no heavier cross than the poet's cross.



Sweet, dear Poet Angel, unfold your wings around me...!



Writing poetry is no art, come on, no art, writing poetry is a favour by God, a favour.



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RENAAT RAMON

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.



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MARNIX GIJSEN

One has to protect poetry from the poets, because it is the most precious asset we possess.



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NOVALIS (1772 - 1801)

Philosophy is the hospital of poetry.

Novalis



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WALLACE STEVENS (3)

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.



Poetry is the supreme fiction.



The poet is the priest of the invisible.


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OCTAVIO PAZ (2)

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.


To read a poem is to hear it with your eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.


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STEVEN WRIGHT

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



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E.M. FORSTER

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



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ROBERT ADAMSON

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.



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