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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
Kings
Thump
President
Adorned
Power
Lick
May
Hinder
Presidents
Stamps
Heads
Parts
More quotes by 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
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
I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Howard Nemerov
The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
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 like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
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
Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
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 would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
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 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
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
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
Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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
