- Obe Postma // What the Poet Must Know
An Anthology
Obe Postma (1868-1963) is one of the great Frisiah poets of the twentieth century. A farmer's son from Koarnwert in Friesland, he worked as a teacher of physics and mathematics during his professional career. He also developed a keen interest in history and philosophy, and in his early thirties started writing poetry, a vocation which continued for the next sixty odd years.
Postma wrote seemingly effortless verse, taking a simple setting and every-day things - a meadow, a village, a ditch-bank, a labourer's house. He sought happiness and harmony, the all- elevating light, the all-embracing soul, giving a voice to these qualities in his poetry. He did so with apparent modesty and sense of proportion, though his writing conceals a proud and self- confident conviction; for Postma knew that his ditch-bank, his cow shed and his fisherpian's houses were just as interesting as
the Empire State Building. What The Poet Must Know is one of the characteristic and moving poems of his oeuvre to which Jabik
Veenbaas refers in more detail in his outstanding preface.
The appreciation of Postma's poetry grew steadily. In 1947 he was awarded the highest literary prize of the Province of Friesland; his Collected Poems were published in 1978, and in 1997 an anthology in Frisian and Dutch appeared.
Now for the first time the reader of English can appreciate a selection of Postma's poetry, brilliantly translated by Anthony Paul.
