Ive never read a political poem thats accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants. – Howard Nemerov
The nice thing about the Bible is it doesnt give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened. – Howard Nemerov
I do insist on making what I hope is sense so theres always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow. – 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