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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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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
Come
Verses
Poetic
Poem
Mostly
Telling
Close
Poetics
Literature
Inseparably
Thought
Verse

More quotes by 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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The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.
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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.
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[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
Howard Nemerov
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When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
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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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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 like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
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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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Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
Howard Nemerov
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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.
Howard Nemerov
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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
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
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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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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