Howard Nemerov Quotes

Language cares.

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

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

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.

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

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,C telephones to D, who has a handOn E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sodFor H’s grave, I do not understandBut J is bringing one clay pigeon downWhile K brings...

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.

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

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.

A chronicle is very different from history proper.

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

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

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.

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

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 l...

I have a plot, but not much happens.

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...

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

A lot happens by accident in poetry.