Howard Nemerov quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Howard Nemerov on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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.

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

We're not in love with Literature all the time - especially when you have to teach it every day.

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.

History is where tensions were.

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.

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

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

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

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

Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.

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.

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

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

A chronicle is very different from history proper.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Children, to be illustrious is sad.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.