editions and publications

• 1975 :: five language manifests
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  five language manifests - and a poem, appears to take on a sequence in the same genre [as on language (1972)] - CS], short texts on language in chronological order, followed by two blank pages. but this time the dried grass is taped to the last page. in truth, it is more of a supplementary page since it is in no way presented in the summary. it is the title of the book that identifies it and presents it as an addition: "- and a poem". what does this mean? a manifest reappears in this collection, first published in 1973, entitled my poetry is the world. it is the artist's most important manifest, contemplated since 1971. it is his definitive manifest, recapitulative, the one that henceforth would inspire his future work and be taken up in different ways. [24] it says that it is not the poet who writes poetry but the world; that the poet is a poet not because he writes in a specific way, but because he is part of the world; that such poetry is therefore not limited to writing, that it is seen, read, eaten and even slept, "every day"; in short, that poetry is life itself. consequently, an element taken from nature, such as the grass in this collection, is an extract of the poetic work of the world, and hence a natural "poem" , a living poem. in the postscript we read: "'poem' is only a word, but the grass is, as all from which it is part of." [25]
• from 1974, the verb "to be" becomes the key word not only of herman de vries' thought but also of his work. [26] it sums up the dazzling experience of existence itself, that precedes all thought and all language. contrary to the traditional approach to poetry, according to which the poet is he who can say things poetically, it is things as they are that make man, if he knows how to see them, a poet. a poet is therefore not an artisan of a particular language; a poet is he who perceives nature as uninterrupted poetry, a permonent creation, "chance and change". and if he attempts to show this to others, he is an artist; he shows that which cannot be said but can only be perceived. such is the artist's advantage over the sage or the philosopher. from the words that separate, fix, repeat, he knows how to return to things themselves and helps us return to them, which means to receive, with gratitude, that which has already always been given to us. understood thusly, poetry is praise, thanksgiving, "love" says herman de vries: "collecting in vain but love" we can read later in collecting notes (1987), a collection consisting of a dried leaf from a tree, short poems, an ash rubbing, photographs of lichen and water.
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