Howard Nemerov Quotes

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

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.

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.

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

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth?- the subject to which you are condemned.

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.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

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

This Constitutional Republic called America is an historic aberration. Any honest student of history will note that the prevailing socio-economic system is feudalism, where a tiny minority control the vast majority of wealth, power, and resources. In doing so, they have absolute control over the 99% of the population. Power equals control.

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

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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