Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov Popularity
Howard Nemerov Biography
Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. He was brother to photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus an ...
Howard Nemerov Poems
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
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I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
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On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
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Some nights it's bound to be your best way out,
When nightmare is the short end of the stick,
When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe
To walk at night, when waking is the only way
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Howard Nemerov Quotes
I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.
Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.
Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?
The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present—henceforth?—the subject to which you are condemned.
Howard Nemerov Comments
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10/25/2021 5:35:18 AM # 1.0.0.738
Howard Nemerov IMO is one of the half dozen or so best US poets of my era - the last half of the 20th century. As he himself has said, he moved from the modernistic, academic, Ezra-Poundish works of his early career to a more natural, more authentic, more personal voice from, say, the late 1950s on. His topics often are simply ordinary life, his tone is often wryly ironic and self-deprecating, but usually - even in his lightest, most frivolous-seeming verse, he makes a point - subtly, kindly (I choose that word deliberately) , and carefully. Though I like most of his poems included in PH, I regret to say that none of my favorites are listed here; hence, I have not been able to include them among my favorite poems. And they certainly belong there, for I cherish them, admire them, and have used them in my teaching many years. A wealth of his best work is in the slim little volume, 'new and selected poems, ' originally published in 1960, but also available as a Phoenix paperback from the U of Chicago P,1963. If you can find a copy of it (check used bookstores online) , I recommend you pay special attention to these (all of which would be in my list of favorites) : 'To Lu Chi' (perhaps his masterpiece) , 'The Pond' (which has most amply rewarded my long study) , 'Death and the Maiden, ' 'Angel and Stone, ' 'Deep Woods, ' 'Boom! ' (a satire on religion and the successful modern man, based on a newspaper clipping with the headline 'SEES BOOM IN RELIGION TOO! ') , 'Sparrow in the Zoo' (very brief and VERY hilarious, with a four-letter word that makes you think twice about your audience before reading it aloud in public) , and many others. Another of my favorites from those years did not make it into this collection: 'Santa Claus, ' a satire on the commercialism of Christmas, which I guarantee will bring the house down - on you - if you read it to young people right before the Christmas break: 'Somewhere on his travels the strange Child / Picked up with this overstuffed confidence man, / Affection's inverted thief, who climbed at night / Down chimneys into dreams, with this world's goods.' (See the Collected Poems from the U of Chicago P, which of course includes the others I've mentioned also.) Back to 'To Lu Chi' for a moment - an exquisite poem, in which the poet Nemerov converses at length with the ancient Chinese poet Lu Chi. He summarizes their similarity across the centuries in these lines, which are perhaps the best brief summary one can find of Nemerov's understanding of the nature of poetry: ......... Neither action nor thought, Only the concentration of our speech In fineness and in strength) ....... Till it can carry, in these other minds, A nobler action and a purer thought.