List of Howard Nemerov Quotes

Children, To Be Illustrious Is Sad.

Obvious Enough That Generalities Work To Protect The Mind From The Great Outdoors; Is It Possible That This Was In Fact Their First Purpose?

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.

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.

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.

I Am Not At All Clear What Free Verse Is Anymore. That's One Of The Things You Learn Not To Know.

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 Would Talk In Iambic Pentameter If It Were Easier.

A Chronicle Is Very Different From History Proper.

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.

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.

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.