SOURCE: Meinke, Peter. Howard Nemerov, pp. 5-45. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968.

In the following monograph about Nemerov's work from The Image and the Law to The Blue Swallows, Meinke emphasizes Nemerov's growth as an artist.

There is an instructive passage in Journal of the Fictive Life in which Howard Nemerov speaks of the sources of poetic power: “I conceive this responsibility of [lyric] poetry to be to great primary human drama, which poets tend to lose sight of because of their privilege of taking close-ups of single moments on the rim of the wheel of the human story. The poet will improve his art who acknowledges the necessity of always returning to that source; he will fail who always writes another poem instead. Hence it has seemed to me that I must attempt to bring together the opposed elements of my character represented by poetry and fiction...