History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. Its one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldnt live without. – Howard Nemerov
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
I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early. – Howard Nemerov
I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks. – Howard Nemerov
WASP is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so its inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not. – Christopher Hitchens