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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
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Howard Nemerov
Age: 71 †
Born: 1920
Born: February 29
Died: 1991
Died: July 5
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Life
Fidgeting
Kindergarten
Easier
Literature
Talk
Funny
Writing
Iambic
Would
Pentameter
More quotes by Howard Nemerov
I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov
I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
Howard Nemerov
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
Howard Nemerov
Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.
Howard Nemerov
Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
Howard Nemerov
I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Howard Nemerov
Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
Howard Nemerov
It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.
Howard Nemerov
Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.
Howard Nemerov
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.
Howard Nemerov
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
Howard Nemerov
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.
Howard Nemerov
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
Howard Nemerov
I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.
Howard Nemerov
History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov
History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.
Howard Nemerov
Absolute power corrupts absolutely and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
Howard Nemerov
Children, to be illustrious is sad.
Howard Nemerov
