Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerovwas an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth29 February 1920
CountryUnited States of America
responsibility government promise
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.
party stories gadgets
Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
science silence shining
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.
writing thinking different
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
literature world spirit
The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.
children
Children, to be illustrious is sad.
war science religion
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.
sex thinking mind
We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.
book firsts imagine
I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.
kids term-paper trying
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.
our-world way impossible
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.
clear knows free-verse
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
different chronicles
A chronicle is very different from history proper.
time children war
Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.