Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerovwas an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth29 February 1920
CountryUnited States of America
literature narrative argument
I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.
literature world spirit
The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.
science silence shining
Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.
kings power president
Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
party stories gadgets
Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
sex thinking mind
We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.
tension
History is where tensions were.
poetic verses
Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.
long over-you stories
Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
nice two giving
The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.
summer august air
When in still air and still in summertime A leaf has had enough of this, it seems To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage Its drifting in detachment down the road.
poetry fidgeting sometimes
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
different chronicles
A chronicle is very different from history proper.
kids term-paper trying
I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.