Dutch Poetry Quotes

Since it has quietly began to snow,
new distances have awakened within me. ~ Gerrit Achterberg

In 2009 i was nominated for the 'best dutch poetry debute' called 'the buddingh award'. It's supposed to be the most important debut price. However the event proved rather hallucinogenic. It started with my publisher expressing 'great surprise' that 'I still managed to get nominated'. The surprise was out of place, since my book simply got the best reviews of all books that year. I went to Poetry International and noticed only 2 of the 3 jury members where present, and the female one kept looking at me in sort of a guilty fashion. Then the award was granted to Misscha Andriessen, which was sort of weird since his book was not seen as universally the best by critics. 'Too lightweight' one review of an important critic read. Later on I read that jurymember Wim Brands one year prior to the price already made clear that 'he is a big fan of Mischa Andriessen'. I always assumed that they were friends somehow but this morning I solved the mystery: they are from the same little village, so it had nothing to do with poetry, just tribal culture at its best. Kind of a relief to know that. ~ Martijn Benders

you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not ~ Rupi Kaur

I dropped by your yesterday
where I found my tomorrow
There I met a living pain
and you: a dying sorrow

From the poem- My Tomorrow ~ Munia Khan

The explanation of this perennial quality of Arabic is to be found simply in the conserving role of nomadism. It is in towns that languages decay, by becoming worn out, the things and institutions they designate. Nomads, who live to some extent outside time, conserve their language better; it is, moreover, the only treasure they can carry around with them in their pastoral existence; the nomad is a jealous guardian of his linguistic heritage, his poetry and his rhetorical art. On the other hand, his inheritance in the way of visual art cannot be rich; architecture presupposes stability, and the same is broadly true of sculpture and painting. ~ Titus Burckhardt

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said.
"Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?"
"Tell me."
"Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say. ~ Louis L'Amour

The Storm
I thought of you when I was wakened
By a wind that made me glad and afraid
Of the rushing, pouring sound of the sea
That the great trees made.
One thought in my mind went over and over
While the darkness shook and the leaves were thinned
I thought it was you who had come to find me,
You were the wind. ~ Sara Teasdale

And tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me ... ~ Sarah Kane

the end is the beginning
the beginning is the end
& we are all just fragments of a
dream ~ Philip Elliott

i open for you like a flower.
i let you in like a new day. ~ AVA.

I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon

Art is a reflection of poetry and beauty of the heart and mind without the use of any words. ~ Debasish Mridha

Darling,
I'm sorry but,
I'm going back to home.
To myself!

I realized,
Home is not the place I live in,
It is not where you are,
It is not somewhere in the world
Waiting for me to arrive but,
Home is wherever I am,
Home is within me.

It's just been a really long time,
I'm going back to home.
To myself! ~ Jyoti Patel

We wear many things,
but that with greatest import
is our expression. ~ J. Benson

A midst deceit I found the truth;
there in the rough I found a diamond.
And from the moment we met,
I think of no one else
Today I choose to be, to live and breathe;
to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.
And you, the object of my delight:
a like-minded opposite I am myself with,
a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.
I know that you love me with every inch of your deep. ~ Donato DiCristino

I love you, too," she said.
Nathaniel's brow furrowed. He turned his face to the side and blinked several times. "Thank god," he said finally. "I don't think unrequited love would have suited me. I might have started writing poetry."
Elisabeth continued stroking his hair. "That doesn't sound so bad."
"I assure you, it would have proven more unpleasant for everyone than necromancy. ~ Margaret Rogerson

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed. ~ R.S. Thomas

I was a violent, self-destructive teenager, who was adopted right at the end of World War II. I was lied to and abused by my parents. I hated life in Utah. I resented the Mormon Church, its sense of superiority and its certitude. I escaped through the Beat writers and discovered poetry and have devoted my entire life to the practice of poetry in varying ways. Poetry gave me a reason for being. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. ~ Sam Hamill

The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you. ~ Thomas Lux

Life is perhaps that enclosed moment
when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes
and it is in the feeling
which I will put into the Moon's impression
and the Night's perception. ~ Forough Farrokhzad

Surely there is no more wretched sight that the human body unloved and uncared for. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

This is how you explain how you feel: broken words and hard truths. ~ R. YS Perez

insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company. ~ Sabrina Benaim

She's like poetry. Like prose and love letters and lyrics, cascading down the center of a page. ~ Colleen Hoover

Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

I still want
the stars for you
even if
you won't name them after me ~ Sharita A Sims

We will spend the rest of the day inventing a kind of love that no longer exists in the world, a kind of love no army can pillage at the outposts, no rumor could bring to its knees like a traitor. ~ Richard Jackson

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

A human life is poetry written in our heart. ~ Debasish Mridha

From the catbird seat, I've found poetry to be the necessary utterance it has always been in America. ~ Natasha Trethewey

July 4th fireworks exhale over the Hudson sadly.
It is beautiful that they have to disappear.
It's like the time you said I love you madly.
That was an hour ago. It's been a fervent year. ~ Frederick Seidel

Our Beasts and our Thieves and our Chattels
Have weight for good or for ill;
But the Poor are only His image,
His presence, His word, His will; -
And so Lazarus lies at our doorstep
And Dives neglects him still. ~ Adelaide Anne Procter

I wish to put together an imaginary nation. It is my belief that no other nation is possible, or rather, I believe that authors who count take responsibility for a map which is addressed to travellers of the earth, the world, and the spirit. Each issue is composed as a map of this land and this glory, images of our cities and of our politics must join our poetry. I want a nation in which discourse is active and scholarship is understood as it should be, the mode of our understanding and the ground of our derivations.
-Robin Blaser (June 3, 1967) ~ Robin Blaser

Imitating others, I failed to find myself. I looked inside and discovered I only knew my name. When I stepped outside I found my real Self. ~Rumi ~ Maryam Mafi

My mother was the best and most beautiful woman who ever lived. She was clean, and good, and always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did - why, I've seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal, and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas - when she gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have wanted her to be hungry, and yet she was that very minute almost crying for food; ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

I write, write and write but I can't find words that define what I feel inside. ~ Azereth Skivel

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it ~ Nâzım Hikmet Ran

In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death. ~ John Clare

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them. ~ Lena Dunham

Prose poetry is not set to a melody or music so there's something freeing about it. ~ William Beckett

But Carroll's were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a new way:
1) Babies are illogical.
2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
3) Illogical persons are despised.
Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles.
And:
1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste.
2) No modern poetry is free from affectation.
3) All of your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles.
4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste.
5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles.
Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting. ~ Steve Martin

The scientific world of the time was in the midst of a terrible ferment, with discoveries and realizations coming at an unseemly rate. To many in the ranks of the conservative and the devout, the new theories of geology and biology were delivering a series of hammer blows to mankind's self-regard. Geologists in particular seemed to have gone berserk, to have thrown off all sense of proper obeisance to their Maker... Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly rather – dare one say it? – insignificant. He may not have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created. ~ Simon Winchester

So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations. ~ Thomas Lynch

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity. ~ Amy Lowell

love should taste like
cotton candy−pink
and sickeningly sweet. sticky
on your teeth, a hunger
that grows with each bite,
it should make you feel
full yet also so light. but
when love tastes sour,
does that mean i did not
eat it right? ~ Mecca-Amirah Jackson

Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Erudition is the crude residue of wilted harvests; wit: the meddlesome weed that wilts them. ~ Ashim Shanker

I am all the time thinking about poetry and fiction and you. ~ Virginia Woolf