Howard Nemerov

American poet and writer who served as both US Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry and as US Poet Laureate.

• Born: March 1, 1920
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: July 5, 1991
• Place of death: University City, Missouri

Biography

Howard Nemerov (NEHM-eh-rawf), a quiet and little-heralded poet throughout much of his life, was born to wealthy Jewish parents who were interested in the arts. Later Nemerov developed an ambivalent attitude toward his relatively protected and privileged childhood. He attended Fieldston School, a preparatory school, and after his graduation in 1937 went on to Harvard University, where he received his B.A. in 1941. After Pearl Harbor, Nemerov enlisted, serving as a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force Coastal Command and then joining the Eighth United States Army Air Corps. He served in England in 1944 and 1945, and his experience of World War II’s destruction left enduring impressions that colored his first books of poetry. During this time, he fell in love with an Englishwoman, Margaret Russell, and they married in 1944. Nemerov began his academic career in 1946, teaching English at Hamilton College in upstate New York. His first book of poetry, The Image and the Law, was published in 1947, and the following year he moved to Bennington College in Vermont, where he remained for eighteen years. From 1963 to 1964, he was the poetry consultant at the Library of Congress, and after leaving Bennington he taught in a variety of schools, including Washington University in St. Louis.

Nemerov was slow to gain renown. In his first two collections of poetry, his early influences—the views of the New Criticism and the work of T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Wallace Stevens—are clearly apparent. It was with his third book of poetry, The Salt Garden, that he established his own voice. A widely anthologized poem, the wryly humorous “The Goose Fish,” is from this volume. Nemerov’s ability to use humor in his poetry was one of his particular gifts; he deftly combined the serious and the comic, the simple and the ironic. Nemerov developed an individual style, in which he showed an affinity for well-established metrical patterns and the careful use of rhyme. His subject was often nature—trees, water, autumn, and animals—and he balanced the simple joy of clear description with a Symbolist’s desire to ascribe meaning to the world. He wrote of childhood, the passage of time, and the relationships among the world, art, and language itself. “The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House,” for example, stemmed from his admiration for Paul Klee’s art. He also addressed current events, as in The Blue Swallows; Nemerov was at Brandeis University, near Boston, during the period of protests and demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s. Three phases of Nemerov’s life contributed to the creation of his poetic voice: his childhood in New York City, his World War II experiences, and his discovery of nature as an adult, during the years he taught in rural Vermont.

Nemerov received many prizes and accolades during his career, among them a Guggenheim fellowship in 1968, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Award in 1968, and an Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 1970. The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov earned for him both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He won a second National Book Award in 1978 for his translation of Uwe George’s In the Deserts of This Earth. In May 1988, Nemerov was named poet laureate of the United States. He was the third person (succeeding Robert Penn Warren and Richard Wilbur) to be named to the post, which was created in 1986. In addition to poetry, Nemerov wrote short stories, essays, and three novels, one of which, the satirical The Homecoming Game, was subsequently made into a play and a film. Critics and other poets have written admiringly of his work and praised him for being an expert craftsman and a writer with wit, intelligence, and humor. Nemerov died in 1991 at the age of seventy-one.

Author Works

Poetry:

The Image and the Law, 1947

Guide to the Ruins, 1950

The Salt Garden, 1955

Mirrors and Windows, 1958

New and Selected Poems, 1960

The Next Room of the Dream: Poems and Two Plays, 1962

The Blue Swallows, 1967

A Sequence of Seven, 1967

The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House, 1968

The Winter Lightning: Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1968

Gnomes and Occasions, 1973

The Western Approaches: Poems, 1973-75, 1975

The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1977

Sentences, 1980

Inside the Onion, 1984

War Stories: Poems about Long Ago and Now, 1987

Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961–1991, 1992

The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 2003

Long Fiction:

The Melodramatists, 1949

Federigo: Or, The Power of Love, 1954

The Homecoming Game, 1957, 1992

Short Fiction:

A Commodity of Dreams, and Other Stories, 1959

Stories, Fables, and Other Diversions, 1971

Drama:

Endor: Drama in One Act, pb. 1961 (verse play)

Nonfiction:

Poetry and Fiction: Essays, 1963

Journal of the Fictive Life, 1965

Reflexions on Poetry and Poetics, 1972

Figures of Thought: Speculations on the Meaning of Poetry and Other Essays, 1978

New and Selected Essays, 1985

The Oak in the Acorn: On “Remembrance of Things Past” and on Teaching Proust, Who Will Never Learn, 1987

Edited Text:

Poets on Poetry, 1965

Miscellaneous:

A Howard Nemerov Reader, 1991

Bibliography

Armenti, Peter. “Howard Nemerov: Online Resources.” Library of Congress, 7 Apr. 2016, www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/nemerov/#LC. Accessed 29 Mar. 2017. Includes a short biography of Nemerov and a list of online resources from the Library of Congress and external sites.

Bartholomay, Julia A. The Shield of Perseus: The Vision and Imagination of Howard Nemerov. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972. Discusses Nemerov’s poetic techniques and recurrent themes. Provides detailed information about the poet drawn from his letters and conversations. An excellent source.

Burris, Sidney. “A Sort of Memoir, a Sort of Review.” Southern Review 28 (Winter, 1992): 184-201. Burris presents a memoir of Nemerov as well as critiques of A Howard Nemerov Reader and Trying Conclusions.

Kinzie, Mary. “The Signature of Things: On Howard Nemerov.” In The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet’s Calling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Examines the body of Nemerov’s work.

Knock, Stanley F., Jr. “Renewal of Illusion.” The Christian Century, January 16, 1962, 85-86. In this review of Nemerov’s verse drama Endor, Knock shows how Nemerov transports an Old Testament story into the context of existentialism and the Cold War. Rather than “see ourselves as others see us,” as poet Robert Burns advised, Nemerov finds hope not in the stripping of illusion, but in its renewal.

Labrie, Ross. Howard Nemerov. Boston: Twayne, 1980. A standard biography in Twayne’s United States Authors series. Includes an index and a bibliography.

Meinke, Peter. Howard Nemerov. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968. One of the most comprehensive books on Nemerov insofar as general knowledge is concerned. It covers not only biographical data but also the effect some life incidents had on his work. Includes brief comments on Nemerov’s major works, tracing Nemerov’s rise to literary prominence.

Nemerov, Alexander. “Modeling My Father.” The American Scholar 62 (Autumn, 1993). A notable biographical piece.

Potts, Donna L. Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism: The Influence of Owen Barfield. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. Potts contends that Nemerov was profoundly influenced by the objective idealism of British philosopher Barfield. Includes excerpts from the thirty years of correspondence between the two and selections of Nemerov’s poetry.