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. — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
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… — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all. — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants. — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do. — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work… — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
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… — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of… — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose? — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
When in still air and still in summertime A leaf has had enough of this, it seems To make up its mind to go;… — Howard Nemerov Copy Share Image
