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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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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
First
Fake
Real
Agree
Always
Line
Icy
Think
Lines
Mustn
Thinking
Literature
Frost
Lasts
Inclined
Last
Robert
Firsts
Poem

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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
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I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
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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.
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When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
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