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Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov

The former Poet Laureate of the United States, Nemerov gives us a lucid and precise twist on the commonplaces of everyday life.

The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1978.

"Howard Nemerov is a witty, urbane, thoughtful poet, grounded in the classics, a master of the craft. It is refreshing to read his work. . . . "—Minneapolis Tribune

"The world causes in Nemerov a mingled revulsion and love, and a hopeless hope is the most attractive quality in his poems, which slowly turn obverse to reverse, seeing the permanence of change, the vices of virtue, the evanescence of solidities and the errors of truth."—Helen Vendler, New York Times Book Review

534 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1981

Poetry

Table of Contents

The Image and the Law (1947)
1
Europe
The Frozen City
From a Record of Disappointment
The Truth of the Matter
Two Poems
The Stare of the Man from the Provinces
Portrait of Three Conspirators
The Triumph of Education
In the Glass of Fashion
Who Did Not Die in Vain
The Place of Value
Under the Bell Jar
The Master at a Mediterranean Port
Paraphrase from Notebooks
The Situation Does Not Change
2
Observation of October
Metropolitan Sunday
Warning: Children at Play
Two Sides to an Outside: Meditation from Empson
A Morality
Epitaph on a Philosopher the Reports of Whose Death Have Been Grossly Minimized
The Baron Baedeker Blew His Nose and, Sighing, Departed
Crocodile at the Ancient Tombs
Glass Dialectic
Refusal of a Kindness Offered
A Chromium-plated Hat: Inlaid with Scenes from Siegfried
History of a Literary Movement
3
Autumnal
For the Squadron
For W___, Who Commanded Well
September Shooting
The Soldier Who Lived through the War
According to His Seasons
To the Memory of John Wheelwright
Anniversary
Lot’s Wife
An Old Photograph
The Photograph of a Girl
On Reading "The Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke"
Sestina I
Sestina II
The Fortune Teller
Advice from the Holy Tomb
Unscientific Postscript

Guide to the Ruins (1950)
Guide to the Ruins
The Second-Best Bed
A Poem of Margery Kempe
A Song of Degrees
On a Text: Jonah IV, xi
Nicodemus
To the Babylonians
Virgin and Martyr
Mars
Peace in Our Time
Song
The Bacterial War
Redeployment
To a Friend
Grand Central, with Soldiers, in Early Morning
A Fable of the War
The Hero Comes Home in His Hamper, and Is Exhibited at the World’s Fair
The Brief Journey West
Succession
Fragment from Correspondence
Fables of the Moscow Subway
The Old Country
Trial and Death, a Double Feature
Sonnet
Carol
Sonnet at Easter
Elegy of Last Resort
Still Life I
Still Life II
Still Life III
The Lives of Gulls and Children
The Earthquake in the West
Praising the Poets of That Country
Madrigal
Four Sonnets
The Ecstasies of Dialectic
Antigone
Sonnet
A Lean and Hungry Look
The Phoenix

The Salt Garden (1955)
1
Fall Song
The Winter Lightning
Zalmoxis
Dandelions
Midsummer’s Day
The First Leaf
Sunday at the End of Summer
A Harvest Home
The Cuckoo King
The Pond
2
The Scales of the Eyes
3
The Salt Garden
The Sanctuary
The Gulls
I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
The Goose Fish
4
Dialectical Songs
Returning to Europe
Armistice
The Vacuum
Young Woman
Instructions for Use of This Toy
An Issue of Life
Dialogue
The Deposition
5
The Snow Globe
An Old Picture
Central Park
The Quarry
Truth
The Market-Place
The Book of Kells
The Priest’s Curse on Dancing
Sleeping Beauty
Deep Woods

Mirrors and Windows (1958)
1
The Mirror
Trees
The Town Dump
The Sunglasses
Storm Windows
Shells
The Statues in the Public Gardens
A Day on the Big Branch
An Old Warplane
Sandpipers
A Clock with No Hands
2
Lightning Storm on Fuji
Home for the Holidays
The Loon’s Cry
Sunderland
Moses
Ahasuerus
Orphic Scenario
3
The Wheel King
Distraction
False Solomon’s Seal
The Murder of William Remington
The Old Soldiers’ Home
Suburban Prophecy
A Primer of the Daily Round
Epigrams
The Fourth of July
Reflexions on the Seizure of the Suez
Seven Macabre Songs
A Singular Metamorphosis
Lore
Drama
Tale
Endegeeste
Moonshine
Canossa
Student Dies in 100 Yard Dash
4
Maia
Cloud Seeding
The Map-Maker on His Art
Brainstorm
Limits
To Lu Chi
Art Song
Writing
Painting a Mountain Stream
Sarabande
Steps for a Dancer
The Dancer’s Reply
Holding the Mirror Up to Nature
 
New Poems (1960)
Moment
Runes
On Certain Wits
To H. M.
Maestria
Going Away
Life Cycle of Common Man
Boom!
Mrs. Mandrill
The View from an Attic Window
Death and the Maiden
Angel and Stone
The Remorse for Time
Mousemeal
The Icehouse in Summer
 
The Next Room of the Dream (1962)
1. Effigies
To Clio, Muse of History
Santa Claus
To the Mannequins
Fontenelle
The Iron Characters
Don Juan to the Statue
Journey of the Snowmen
The Daily Globe
A Picture
Nothing Will Yield
One Forever Falien
A Predecessor of Perseus
2. Emblems
A Spell before Winter
Human Things
Winter Exercise
Idea
Somewhere
De Anima
The Dial Tone
Goldfish
Polonius Passing through a Stage
The View from Pisgah
Maiden with Orb and Planets
The First Point of Aries
The Dragonfly
The Junction, on a Warm Afternoon
Blue Suburban
These Words Also
Vermeer
At a Country Hotel
The End of Summer School
Burning the Leaves
Elegy for a Nature Poet
The Fall Again
Lot Later
The Private Eye
To David, about His Education
An Interview
Gnomes
Realities
Debate with the Rabbi
To the Bleeding Hearts Association of American Novelists
The Poet at Forty
From the Desk of the Laureate: For Immediate Release
Make Big Money at Home! Write Poems in Spare Time!
On the Threshold of His Greatness, the Poet Comes Down with a Sore Throat
Metamorphoses
Lion & Honeycomb
4 Endor
5 Cain

The Blue Swallows (1967)
1. Legends
The First Day
Creation of Anguish
Landscape with Figures
The Distances They Keep
Learning by Doing
In the Commercial Gardens
The Cherry Tree
A Life
Growing a Ghost
Epitaph
The View
The Human Condition
The Companions
Sarajevo
This, That & the Other
To a Scholar in the Stacks
Lobsters
An Old Colonial Imperialist
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Departure of the Ships
2. The Great Society
The Night before Christmas
Sunday
Enthusiasm for Hats
A Way of Life
Money
Make Love Not War
A Negro Cemetery Next to a White One
At the Airport
Presidential Address to a Party of Exiles
To the Governor & the Legislature of Massachusetts
A Full Professor
Grace To Be Said before Committee Meetings
A Relation of Art and Life
A Modern Poet
On the Platform
Cybernetics
Keeping Informed in D.C.
The Great Society, Mark X
The Dream of Flying Comes of Age
Grace To Be Said at the Supermarket
August, 1945
Christmas Morning
3. Figures
The Flame of a Candle
Between the Window and the Screen
Decorated Skull in a University Museum
Dead River
The Rope’s End
Projection
In the Black Museum
The Race
Sightseers
Thought
Style
Celestial Globe
One Way
4. The Blue Swallows
The Blue Swallows
The May Day Dancing
The Breaking of Rainbows
The Beekeeper Speaks . . . And Is Silent
The Mud Turtle
Summer’s Elegy
Two Girls
For Robert Frost, in the Autumn, in Vermont
The Sweeper of Ways
Small Moment
Firelight in Sunlight
Interiors

Gnomes & Occasions (1973)

Awards

National Book Foundation: National Book Awards
Won

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