Howard Nemerov Quotes - Page 2

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• We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.

  Howard Nemerov

  Sex, Thinking, Mind

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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

  Kings, Power, President

  Howard Nemerov (1977). “The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov”, p.420, University of Chicago Press

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• When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

  Howard Nemerov

  Writing, Thinking, Different

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• 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

  Literature, Poetic, Verses

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• Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

  Howard Nemerov

  Sensual, Logic, Language

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• I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

  Howard Nemerov

  Political, Literature, Want

  1988 In the International Herald Tribune,14 Oct. SeeAuden 40:2.

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• When in still air and still in summertime
  A leaf has had enough of this, it seems
  To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage
  Its drifting in detachment down the road.

  Howard Nemerov

  Summer, Air, August

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov”, p.440, University of Chicago Press

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• 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

  Nice, Two, Giving

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• I have a plot, but not much happens.

  Howard Nemerov

  Plot, Happens

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• I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

  Howard Nemerov

  Children, Ugly, My Children

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• 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

  Facts, Responsible, Cases

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• 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

  Mean, Character, Stories

  Howard Nemerov (1993). “A Howard Nemerov Reader”, p.186, University of Missouri Press

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• For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

  Howard Nemerov

  Class, Literature, Serious

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “Journal of the Fictive Life”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• A chronicle is very different from history proper.

  Howard Nemerov

  Different, Literature, Chronicles

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• I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

  Howard Nemerov

  Thinking, Innovation, Literature

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• I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

  Howard Nemerov

  Poetry, Fidgeting, Sometimes

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• 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

  Beautiful, Moving, Years

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• 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.

  Howard Nemerov

  Book, Firsts, Imagine

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• Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?

  Howard Nemerov

  Mind, Purpose, Firsts

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “Journal of the Fictive Life”, p.12, University of Chicago Press

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• 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.

  Howard Nemerov

  Time, Children, War

  1960 New Poems,'The View from an Attic Window'.

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• 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

  Our World, Literature, Way

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• I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

  Howard Nemerov

  Clear, Verses, Knows

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• I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.

  Howard Nemerov

  Literature, Narrative, Argument

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• I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

  Howard Nemerov

  Funny, Life, Writing

  Interview with Grace Cavalieri, www.gracecavalieri.com. October 1988.

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• Children, to be illustrious is sad.

  Howard Nemerov

  Children

  1958 Mirrors and Windows,'The Statues in the Public Gardens'.

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