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

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I have a plot, but not much happens.
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When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
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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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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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I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
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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 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.
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Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
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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 am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
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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
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Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
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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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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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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
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When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
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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.
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
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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.
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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