Literary fame’s a curious thing. During much of his life, you might reasonably have thought Howard Nemerov’s name would endure forever: he was showered with every honor the American literary establishment can bestow, and had immediate access to the most distinquished and prestigious venues. By most accounts, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Now he’s rather “Howard…who?”.

I had heard his name in college, while he was still alive and the recipient of respectful critical attention— and vaguely knew he was a formalist. When I became interested in learning about formal verse (a year and some change ago) I went to the library shelves to get a first glance at something more or less contemporary. I couldn’t find a lot of names I picked up from the ‘Sphere, but there was a neglected Collected for Nemerov, which I browsed for a couple of weeks.

I didn’t really take to it, but I got a sense he was quite competant, and for a free-verser and Modernist, his poetry made a certain amount of sense to me— the approach, topics and tone seemed worthy and important.

Let’s say, he wasn’t that good. He wasn’t that bad, either.

A Spell before Winter
by Howard Nemerov

After the red leaf and the gold have gone,
Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain
Bruised and discolored, when October's flame
Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land
Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade.
There is a knowledge in the look of things,
The old hills hunch before the north wind blows.

Now I can see certain simplicities
In the darkening rust and tarnish of the time,
And say over the certain simplicities,
The running water and the standing stone,
The yellow haze of the willow and the black
Smoke of the elm, the silver, silent light
Where suddenly, readying toward nightfall,
The sumac's candelabrum darkly flames.
And I speak to you now with the land's voice,
It is the cold, wild land that says to you
A knowledge glimmers in the sleep of things:
The old hills hunch before the north wind blows.

MacArthur

You certainly select the most interesting poets to study.

The above piece seemed to have strong under-currents of commentary on a changing nation. I checked his bio, and found out he was, indeed, a Canadian pilot during WWII. This poem deserves a bit more attention than a quick read.

Thanks for bringing him to our attention.

I prefer this one of his- more so for the fact that
when I first read it I thought it was gonna be crap,
having never heard of him (and the the first line)-
but it`s now among my all time favourites- as is the
first line.
The trope strongly appeals to me for some reason,
the wonderful assumption that people know who
Flaubert was- and just the simplicity of having
something to say, then just saying it without any
bullshit.

Style


Flaubert wanted to write a novel
About nothing. It was to have no subject
And be sustained upon the style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising above
The abyss, or like the little animals
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch
That breaks, but do not fall
Till they look down. He never wrote that novel,
And neither did he write another one
That would have been called La Spirale,
Wherein the hero`s fortunes were to rise
In dreams, while his life disintegrated.

Even so, for those two books
We thank the master. They can be read,
With difficulty, in the spirit alone,
Are not so wholly lost as certain works
Burned at Alexandria, flooded at Florence,
And are never taught at universities.
Moreover, they are not deformed by style,
That fire that eats what it illuminates.