His third book, Nieuwe gedichten (New Poems, 1934), written during the great economic crisis, wishes to redirect poetry to more earthly matters and give it a function there: the secret can only be found here and now, but it remains intact. The highlight of the collection is the narrative poem Awater, which can be regarded as a response to Eliot’s The Waste Land. The poem evokes a surrealist atmosphere and is full of references to world literature. It is an exploration of the modern world, but the purport remains ambiguous, as if often the case in Nijhoff’s work.

（http://www.nlpvf.nl/Book/NLPVF_BooktxtDB.php?Book=398）

Martinus Nijhoff, Dutch poet, dies in The Hague. From his early work De wandelaar & his best known volume, Vormen ("Forms," 1924), his work became more optimistic, such as Nieuwe gedichten ("New Poems," 1934) & Het uur U ("Zero Hour," 1942).

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Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953) wrote essays, translations, theatre plays, and poems. During his life he published four collections of poetry, which belong to the best work ever published in Dutch. Right from his debut with De wandelaar (The Walker) in 1916, he was recognized as a poet of rare genius. His following compilations, Vormen (Forms) in 1924 and Nieuwe gedichten (New Poems) in 1934, confirmed his reputation as a great innovator of the Dutch literary landscape, although he remained faithful to traditional verse forms. Nijhoff’s last work of poetry was the long epic poem Het uur U (H-Hour), which was published in conjunction with Een Idylle in 1942.