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 the first burst of something wonderful.
Howard Nemerov

Language cares.
Howard Nemerov

I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov

A chronicle is very different from history proper.
Howard Nemerov

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.
Howard Nemerov

A lot happens by accident in poetry.
Howard Nemerov

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
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