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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
Poem
Mostly
Telling
Close
Poetics
Literature
Inseparably
Thought
Verse
Come
Verses
Poetic
More quotes by 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
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
Howard Nemerov
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
Howard Nemerov
Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
I have a plot, but not much happens.
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
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
The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
Howard Nemerov
A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
Howard Nemerov
Children, to be illustrious is sad.
Howard Nemerov
History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov
When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
Howard Nemerov
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
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
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.
Howard Nemerov
[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
Howard Nemerov
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
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
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
