Howard Nemerov has written often about wars great and small, the overtly political and the deeply personal. But only with the passage of time, a heightening of technique and deepening of insight, has he been able to write from his experience in World War II as he does here, where historical past and personal history finally dovetail. From "The War in the Heavens" to "The War in the Streets," Nemerov chronicles with devastating grace the harrowing of life.
"These new poems of Howard Nemerov are the poems of a master at his best. What is more, they are accessible. They speak out in a...

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...

"The only way out," writes Howard Nemerov, "is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present henceforth? the subject to which you are condemned." This is the record of the struggle to compose a novel; a struggle transformed by Nemerov into a far-reaching exploration of the creative process itself.
"He often shows bravery and shrewdness; the book is full of fine criticism and psychological insight. As always, his prose has that ease and transparency that make one forget...

Howard Nemerov Poet Laureate of the United States, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets was one of the most prolific and significant American poets of the twentieth century. By the time of his death in 1991, he had published fourteen collections of poetry.
Judiciously selected and introduced by poet Daniel Anderson, "The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov" represents the broad spectrum of Nemerov's virtues as a poet his intelligence, his wit, his compassion, and his irreverence. It stands as the retrospective collection of...

Howard Nemerov - Poet Laureate of the United States, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets - was one of the most prolific and significant American poets of the twentieth century. By the time of his death in 1991, he had published fourteen collections of poetry. Judiciously selected and introduced by poet Daniel Anderson, The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov represents the broad spectrum of Nemerov's virtues as a poet - his intelligence, his wit, his compassion, and his irreverence. It stands as the retrospective collection of the...

Poetic Diction, first published in 1928, begins by asking why we call a given grouping of words "poetry" and why these arouse "aesthetic imagination" and produce pleasure in a receptive reader. Returning always to this personal experience of poetry, Owen Barfield at the same time seeks objective standards of criticism and a theory of poetic diction in broader philosophical considerations on the relation of world and thought. His profound musings explore concerns fundamental to the understanding and appreciation of poetry, including the nature of metaphor, poetic effect, the difference between...

"Rejoining the Common Reader" is suffused with the impulse that motivates Clara Claiborne Park's distinguished writing and teaching: the desire to related literature to the experience of its readers. This humane, balanced, and entertaining book will appeal to anyone who longs to recapture the pleasure of reading for personal enrichment and to teachers of literature who have grown to resent the intrusiveness of theory and theorizing and wish to reexamine what they are doing to, for, and with their students.