DAAM NOPPE

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.



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RENDRA

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



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ALBERT HAGENAARS (2)

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.


Writing poetry while traveling is far more important to me than traveling while writing poetry.



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D.A.M. BINNENDIJK

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



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JAN EIJKELBOOM

Writing poetry means to me: victory. Blood.



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J.C. BLOEM (4)

What someone is in the deepest of his being, is demonstrated by his poetry.



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



A poem gets better as one notices its words less obviously.



Form and content of a poem originate at the same time, are fully inseparable. I would like to proceed by saying: they are equal, they are the same.



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WIM VAN TIL

The heart is the engine of the poem.



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TOSHIMITSU HASUMI

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



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BEN CAMI

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



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JACOB ISRAEL DE HAAN

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



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LAWRENCE FERLINGHTTI

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.



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CASSANDRA CLARE

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.



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ESTHER JANSMA

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



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OSCAR WILDE

We Irish are too poetical to be poets.



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T.S. ELIOT

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



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ALAIN BOSQUET

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



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JEF LAMBRECHT

Writing is surviving. Writing poetry is sending messages to unknown destinations, beyond the borders of time and space, on the other side of the frontline.



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ERIK HEYMAN

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



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PAUL ELUARD

The poet is the one who inspires more than the one who is inspired.


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HERMAN VAN DEN BERGH

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


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ANTONIO GAMONEDA

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.


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TONY ROMBOUTS (2)

poetry + poetry = everything
poetry - poetry = nothing


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


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HERMAN VAN ROMPUY (4)

Am I a politician lost in poetry or a poet lost in politics? One could replace this by: am I a man of thought lost in politics or a politician lost in the world of thought?.



I have poetic feelings, which is something else than being a poet.


Poetry is an education. I was so lucky to have had good teachers for Greek and Latin. We read Horatius, Vergilius, but also Juvenalis and Ovidius and of course Homeros and Sophocles.


If Guido Gezelle may be called the greatest poet in Flemish literature, then Shakespeare is the main poet in world literature. It puzzles me how he managed to create such a poetic 'oeuvre', while being a money-grubber.


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EUGENIO MONTALE (3)

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.


One can't produce a single work without the help of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thinking.


Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.


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FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA (5)

What can I tell you about poetry? What will I say to you about these clouds, about this sky? Seeing, seeing, looking at them, looking at it, and not more. You will understand a poet can't say anything about poetry. I would like to leave those matters to critical reviewers and professors.



My 'gitanismo' is a literary theme and a book. Nothing more.



The whole day I am a factory of poetic activity.



Poetry doesn’t like followers but loves lovers.



Theatre is poetry which rises up from the book and it is so human one would like to talk about it, cry and weep out of despair.


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