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



www.alberthagenaars.nl

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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