Quotes by Howard Nemerov

About Howard Nemerov:

Howard Nemerov was 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 (1977), he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.

Howard Nemerov

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

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

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

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

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

Howard Nemerov

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

Howard Nemerov

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

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

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

Howard Nemerov

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

Howard Nemerov

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

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

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

Howard Nemerov

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

Howard Nemerov

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.

Howard Nemerov

Author Bio

  • NameHoward Nemerov
  • DescriptionPoet
  • BornFebruary 29, 1920
  • DiedJuly 5, 1991
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Bollingen Prize; Pulitzer Prize For Poetry; National Book Award; National Medal Of Arts