Landscape with Rowers: Poetry from the Netherlands

Though the Netherlands has been the site of vigorous literary activity since at least the Beweging van Vijftig (Movement of the Fifties) poets, the status of Dutch as a "minor" language spoken by only fifteen million people has kept its rich poetry more or less a secret. This volume - featuring J.M. Coetzee's English translations side-by-side with the originals - brings the work of six of the most important modern and contemporary Dutch poets to light. Ranging in style from the rhetorical to the intensely lyrical, the work here includes examples of myth-influenced modernist verse, nature poetry, experimental poetry, poems conscious of themselves within a pan-European avant-garde, and Cees Nooteboom's uncompromising reflections on the powers and limitations of art. In addition to Nooteboom, the poets represented are Gerrit Achterberg, Hugo Claus, Sybren Polet, Hans Faverey, and Rutger Kopland.