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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
Parts
Kings
Thump
Adorned
President
Lick
Power
Hinder
May
Presidents
Stamps
Heads
More quotes by Howard Nemerov
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
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
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
A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
Howard Nemerov
I have a plot, but not much happens.
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
Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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
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
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
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 am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
Howard Nemerov
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
Howard Nemerov
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
Howard Nemerov
History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov
[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
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
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
