Living Space: Poems of the Dutch "Fiftiers"

by Peter Glassgold (editor)

English, Dutch (translation)

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1979

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[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dutch Fiftiers' movement had its beginnings in the art world of postwar Amsterdam, among the painters who joined together in 1948 to form the Experimental Group Holland (De Experimentele Groep Holland), known internationally as Cobra (COpenhagen-BRussels-Amsterdam). Its birth manifesto proclaimed in part: "A living art recognizes no distinction between the beautiful and the ugly because it doesn't draw up any aesthetic norms. The ugly which functioned as a supplement to the beautiful in the artistic production of the culture of the last centuries was a permanent indictment of the unnaturalness of this class community and its aesthetics based on virtuosity, a demonstration of the curbing, restrictive influence which these aesthetics exerted on the natural creative urge."

- Introduction, pg. ix

* * *

From Bert Schierbeek...

look
as humans we are
so ancient
that we almost
cannot contain
(due to the Great Forgetting)
the experience of ages
(our buildings up)
and often don't want to

meanwhile we do
(and thereby)
live that way
and therefore the dream
is often greater
than our waking life
so that the lifeless
words and the deeds
never realize themselves

. . . . . . . . . .

grief
is the metabolizing of
a wound
the acknowledgement
of a healing

. . . . . . . . . .

bird sings
branch breaks
bird falls
bird flies
bird sings

. . . . . . . . . .

the door

a door is open
or closed

a door that's open
is a hole toward
space

a door that's closed
part of the wall
marks off space

if it moves
it is a door

so I am
a door

- from The Door, pg. 11-12

From Jan G. Elburg...

This sadness is real just as
a fake diamond can be real glass:
I understand, I eat and I'm alive
and there's a lot worse, for me too,
but anyway . . .

I see the birds, and I do not hear them.
I hear the birds, and they are hidden.
I am not whole.

I am half a kiss,
half a caress,
I am not whole.

- this sadness, pg. 17-18

From Gerrit Kouwenaar...

"Whereof one cannot speak
thereof one must be silent"

so in fact only feasible
in fact, so unfeasible
in language
without at least that indefinite article: a

love that without much talking
flattens the world like grass

in the lukewarm milk of the evening
the world was a park with gratis roses

you and I
when the volcano erupted
when the city council gave in
when the coffee break broke

you let your tongue run
away with you blabbing about
ariadne's thread, and I
releasing myself though I'd choke -

- whereof one cannot speak, pg. 33-34

From Lucebert...

I try in poetic fashion
that is to say
simplicities luminous waters
to give expression to
the expanse of life at its fullest

if I had not been a man
like masses of men
but if I had been who I was
the stone or fluid angel
birth and decay would not have touched me
the road from forlorness to communion
the stones beasts beasts bids bids road
would not be so befouled
as it can be seen to be in my poems
that are snapshots of that road

in this age what was always called
beauty beauty has burned her face
she no longer comforts mean
she comforts the larvae the reptiles the rats
but she startles man
and strikes him with the awareness
of being a breadcrumb on the universe's skirt

no longer evil alone
the deathblow alone makes us rebellious or meek
but also good
the embrace that leaves us fumbling in despair
at space

and so I sought out
language in her beauty
heard there she had nothing human left
but the speech defects of the shadow
but those of the earsplitting sunlight

- I try in poetic fashion, pg. 39-40

From Sybren Polet...

I say. Say nothing, I say nothing but: We. It often
fissions but is, for it has a sp. gravity
of 34.3, atomic number 2: 2 protons (you
and I), 2 neutrons (?), and a very small neutrino.
While emitting a ʌ particle
we develop so much erotic heat
- the equal of six complete married couples in their first degree
of acquaintanceship - that we matter-mystics dissolve
in light. Neutral is the whiteness
that surrounds nothing, is nothing, wills
nothing.
No astrophysicist drifts past. No supersonic angel
rustles. - No atom, no adept, no Adam.

- We Matter, pg. 53

From Remco Campert...

Unbelievable
that when I was a boy
I wrote a poem about
the silver whiteness of a birch tree

and all about me
the grand spree of
Liberation:
water turned into whisky.

Everybody boozed and fucked,
all Europe was one big mattress
and the sky the ceiling
of a third rate hotel.

And I timid youth simply had to
sing the pure birch
and the modest beauty
of its leafage.

- Unbelievable, pg. 68

From Hugo Claus...

No house is so black
That I cannot live in it
Cannot span my hands across its walls

No morning is so white
That I cannot wake in it
Like a bed

Thus I live and wake in this house
On the crossroads of night and morning

And wander over fields of nerve filament
And touch with my fingernails 10
At each resigned abandoned body's approach

Incantating chaste words
Like: rain and wind apple bread
Clotted and dark blood of women

- An Angry Man, pg.