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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
Freedom
Never
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" I have a plot, but not much happens. "
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" I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem. "
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Talk
Sometimes
" 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
Mathematics
Language
Logic
" When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats. "
Howard Nemerov
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Write
Starting
" 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. "
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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
Business
Why
Work
" Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it. "
Howard Nemerov
Once
Rhyme
Thought
" A lot happens by accident in poetry. "
Howard Nemerov
Lot
Happens
Accident
" 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
History
Nature
Revolution
" When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all. "
Howard Nemerov
New
New England
Poet
" I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants. "
Howard Nemerov
Poetry
Things Happen
Never
" The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even. "
Howard Nemerov
Even
Fairly
Spirit
" 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
Way
Said
Poetry
" A teacher is a person who never says anything once. "
Howard Nemerov
Person
Who
Anything
" 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
Argument
Hope
Follow
" Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time. "
Howard Nemerov
Leave
Free
Free Time
" Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice. "
Howard Nemerov
Long Time
Same
Long
" 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
Impossible
History
Deal
" We're not in love with Literature all the time - especially when you have to teach it every day. "
Howard Nemerov
Every Day
You
Time
" I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones. "
Howard Nemerov
Like
Ugly
Even
" When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do. "
Howard Nemerov
Somebody
You
Write
" 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
You
Know
Student
" Language cares. "
Howard Nemerov
Communication
Cares
Language
" 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
Nothing
Out
Facts
" 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
Say
They Say
Try
" When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had. "
Howard Nemerov
Greatest
Modern
Stories
" I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know. "
Howard Nemerov
Free
I Am
Know
" The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. "
Howard Nemerov
Success
Secrets
Wife
" 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
Last
Line
Beautiful
" I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us. "
Howard Nemerov
Write
Us
Think