Top 37 Quotes by Howard Nemerov

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.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

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

A chronicle is very different from history proper.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

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.

Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?

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

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

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