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SOURCE: Shaw, Robert B. “Making Some Mind of What Was Only Sense.” Nation 226 (25 February 1978): 213-15.
In the following review of The Collected Poems, Shaw points to Nemerov's versatility as a poet and his attention to the important themes of great literature.
What makes a man write a poem is a question which admits of no easy answer. My own initial question, prompted by Howard Nemerov's Collected Poems, is a related one, perhaps equally mysterious. What makes a man who has written a poem write another, and another, and another … ? This collection runs more than 500 pages, comprising nine volumes published over the last thirty years. Few of Nemerov's contemporaries can match his copiousness; one thinks back for comparison to the awesome productivity of Tennyson or Browning, or more recently that of Stevens and Yeats. The Victorians were at least assured of having a reading public to address; in our...
This section contains 1,950 words (approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page) |
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