SOURCE: Randall, Julia. “Genius of the Shore: The Poetry of Howard Nemerov.” Hollins Critic 6, no. 3 (June 1969): 1-12.

In the following essay, Randall analyzes the ways in which Nemerov's “double vision” enables him to objectify the invisible world through the observable world.

Once, writes Nemerov, villainous William of Occam exploded the dream that we could confidently assign the authorship of the Great Writing. And yet science, social science, and philosophy go on confidently assigning. “Nature,” they cry; “Man,” they cry; “God,” they cry—physics in one tongue, theology in another. What Occam in fact pointed out was that what a thing is in itself in no way depends on how we think of it. But it is by thought embodied in language, and by language embodied in institution, that we construct the civilization in which we live, the human world which so often appears to be simply the Self...