SOURCE: Prunty, Wyatt. “Permanence in Process: Poetic Limits that Delimit.” Southern Review 15 (January 1979): 265-71.

In the following essay, Prunty examines Nemerov's Collected Poems, finding an emphasis on the interplay of movement and stasis, as well as a sense of compassion.

Having won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his Collected Poems, Howard Nemerov has said he is going back to work to find out whether the book “is a tombstone or a milestone.”¹ think it is fair to say that such a response is characteristic not only of his humor but of a dark reserve as well. In his poetry, this tendency surfaces when limit and process are seen as mutually dependent opposites. For example, in his first volume, The Image and the Law (1947), Nemerov begins one poem with “Only the dead have an enduring city” and in conclusion says “Like melting wax we change...