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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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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
Presidents
Stamps
Heads
Parts
Kings
Thump
President
Adorned
Power
Lick
May
Hinder
More quotes by Howard Nemerov
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
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
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
I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
Howard Nemerov
I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
Howard Nemerov
The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
Howard Nemerov
That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.
Howard Nemerov
When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
Howard Nemerov
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
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
Howard Nemerov
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
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
A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
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
Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
Howard Nemerov
History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov
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
Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
