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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
The spirit world doesn’t admit to communicating with me, so it’s fairly even. Howard Nemerov Read Quote
We’re not in love with Literature all the time – especially when you have to teach it every day. Howard Nemerov Read Quote
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats. Howard Nemerov Read Quote
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 Read Quote