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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

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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
Thinking
Comes
Write
Art
Littles
Distinguishes
Little
Verse
Writing
Verses
Thing
Consider
Think
Literature

More quotes by Howard Nemerov

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When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
Howard Nemerov
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I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.
Howard Nemerov
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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
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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
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
Howard Nemerov
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Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
Howard Nemerov
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
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This Constitutional Republic called America is an historic aberration. Any honest student of history will note that the prevailing socio-economic system is feudalism, where a tiny minority control the vast majority of wealth, power, and resources. In doing so, they have absolute control over the 99% of the population. Power equals control.
Howard Nemerov
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Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
Howard Nemerov
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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
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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
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The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
Howard Nemerov
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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
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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.
Howard Nemerov
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov
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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
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When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
Howard Nemerov
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Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
Howard Nemerov
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I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
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Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
Howard Nemerov