Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov Paperback – 15 July 1981

Nemerov is a poet who deserves much wider recognition this side of the Atlantic. He comes with an impressive array of accolades and this collection provides a clear justification why. It’s a weighty tome but there are few areas of lag or treading of water. There are many poems that stand out- the lesser known “Brainstorm” Is one of my personal favourites- but the entire collection provides a rewarding and thought provoking read. Unreservedly recommended.

Howard Nemerov is a poet whose work should be more well-known than it is. Those who do know his work associate him with his time as the United States Poet Laureate and as the brother of the photographer Diane Arbus. It's a shame that Howard Nemerov's work isn't included more in anthologies (Garrison Keillor, however, is generous in his praise), or that his books aren't on the shelves of more stores for a newer generation of readers. I've often looked and discovered, in disappointment, that the titles go from Thomas Nashe straight to Pablo Neruda. I imagine that will change soon, as more and more people, younger and from all over the world, come to understand the breadth and complexity of Nemerov's work.As a war veteran who flew in the air force in Britain during World War II, few could capture the sense of what it meant to live in America after the War the way Nemerov did--that feeling of buoyancy and optimism tempered with the occasional bout of disillusionment and anxiety.'The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov' is a collection of poems from Nemerov's major books spanning the course of nearly fifty years: 'The Image and the Law' (1947), 'Guide to the Ruins' (1950), 'The Salt Garden' (1955), 'Mirrors and Windows' (1958), 'New Poems' (1960), 'Blue Swallows' (1967)-often considered his best work, 'Gnomes and Occasions' (1973), and 'The Western Approaches' (1975). The collection offers reader a dazzling variety of different types of poems--some meditative and mournful, some dry, ironic, and savagely funny, and some filled with hope and optimism.As a civic poet, Nemerov captures the zeitgeist of his time in a way few others could. Poems like "The Fourth of July," "Christmas Morning," "Watching Football on TV," and "Grace to be Said at the Supermarket," highlight aspects of American life and ritual in a disarmingly profound way while also evoking something deeply personal. Later poems, about the mystery of nature, "Late Butterflies," "Learning the Trees," and "Gingkoes in the Fall," and ones of fatherhood, "To David, about his Education" and "September, the First Day at School," have their own haunting quality about looking closely at the world and about aging. Some of my personal favorites are "Thirtieth Anniversary Report of the Class of '41," "Painting a Mountain Stream," "Primer of the Daily Round," and "The War in the Air," though the list goes on.A particularly moving work is 1958's 'Mirrors and Windows' which is dedicated to the Color Field painter, Paul Feeley, who taught at Bennington and who was Nemerov's great friend. Key poems from that collection deal with the wonder and mystery of the creative process--how the arts are interconnected: "Sarabande," "Art Song," "Steps for a Dancer." The extraordinary "Painting a Mountain Stream" says better than many poems I've read what it means to create something, "I speak of what is running down. Of sun, of thunder bearing the rain... Study this rhythm, not this thing The brush's tip streams from the wrist... The running water is the wrist. In the confluence of the wrist things and ideas ripple together"And ultimately the creative act is something we can only harness ourselves, and it lies within us "The water that seemed to run is here."Nemerov's poems carry you away the way great art should. They're like one of Mahler's early symphonies, or a play by Eugene O'Neill. In terms of becoming more familiar with his body of work in poetry, this book is the perfect place to start.

I was directed to Howard Nemerov's poetry while reading the poems of Theodore Roethke, and am so very happy that I took that opportunity to get acquainted with Nemerov's work. Poet laureate of the USA, 1963-1964 and 1988-1990, he won the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer. New York born and raised, he was brother to Diane Arbus, the very fine photographer and was himself interested in photography, was an art connoisseur, taught at Washington University, Brandeis, Bennington, and Hamilton. He was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force and later in the USAF.He is considered a formalist poet and wrote many poems about the war. One of the poems that mesmerized me was TO LU CHI, who lived in AD 302 and wrote a thesis on writing poetry called the WEN FU, which Nemerov's poem encouraged me to buy for myself. Nemerov's poem SARABANDE, on the raptures that music induces, was beautifully and evocatively realized, and a wonderful and satiric parody of the boom of the 1950's, that post-war boom that awakened America's "hero" mentality again, entitled BOOM!, was thoroughly enjoyable and point on. In the section, LEGENDS, the first several poems are powerful. THE FIRST DAY and THE CREATION OF ANGUISH are particularly stunning. They purely rise to greatness. His poems of Fall, of the southward migration patterns of birds, of trees and leaves, are evocative and beautiful.This book presented poems published before 1975, and I must get his later work. He is marvelous reading.

I have to admit I had never heard of Nemerov, but once I read some of his work, I had to buy this Collected Works, a terrific anthology of his work across his whole career. The poems are so accessible and humane...on so many topics. I especially enjoyed ones that he wrote in response to be a long-serving university professor, dealing with all the committees, ranks, and "publish or perish" bull. So refreshing.

An overlooked mid-century Master. Anyone who survived the 20th century with his sense of humor intact should be treasured ...

Howard Nemerov was my teacher at Bennington College in the sixties. He was a tough and sensitive teacher.Nemerov's poems are very much like the teacher I remember, often playful,sometimes a bit obscure ,but always challenging, and deeply original.