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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

More quotes by 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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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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[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
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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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.
Howard Nemerov
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I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
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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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 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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The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
Howard Nemerov
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov
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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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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
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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.
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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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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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
Howard Nemerov
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov