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...