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" When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do. "
Howard Nemerov
Somebody
You
Write
Related Quotes:
" I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem. "
Howard Nemerov
Within
Talk
Sometimes
" Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it. "
Howard Nemerov
Once
Rhyme
Thought
" When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats. "
Howard Nemerov
Great
Write
Starting
" 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 have a plot, but not much happens. "
Howard Nemerov
Much
Plot
Happens
" I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier. "
Howard Nemerov
Easier
Funny
Talk
" 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
Close
Telling
Poem
" 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
" Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. "
Howard Nemerov
Travel
Light
Science
" A chronicle is very different from history proper. "
Howard Nemerov
Different
Very
Proper
" The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. "
Howard Nemerov
Success
Secrets
Wife
" Language cares. "
Howard Nemerov
Communication
Cares
Language
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even. "
Howard Nemerov
Even
Fairly
Spirit
" 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
" I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones. "
Howard Nemerov
Like
Ugly
Even
" A teacher is a person who never says anything once. "
Howard Nemerov
Person
Who
Anything
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Freedom
Bible
You
" 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
Outdoors
Work
Purpose
" A lot happens by accident in poetry. "
Howard Nemerov
Lot
Happens
Accident
" 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
" 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
" Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree. "
Howard Nemerov
Said
Fake
Real
" 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