Quotes by Howard Nemerov
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.
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 sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from 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. The first thought is this: fear. I cannot write because I am afraid. Of what?
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
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.
Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?
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.
A chronicle is very different from history proper.
The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from 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.
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