SOURCE: Burris, Sidney. “A Sort of Memoir, A Sort of Review.” Southern Review 28 (winter 1992): 184-201.

In the following essay, Burris presents a memoir of Nemerov as well as critiques of A Howard Nemerov Reader and Trying Conclusions.

I was sitting on the front porch of Rebel's Rest, the watering hole for the faculty and fellows of the Sewanee Writers Conference, when Howard Nemerov told me that there were only two levels of diction available to the American poet: the plain and the not-so-plain. Long familiar with Nemerov's poetry and criticism, I had never spent an extended amount of time with him, but during the first few days at Sewanee I learned quickly that disagreement over a matter of this sort would be partner to peril. Rhetorical seduction had always been one of Nemerov's prominent talents, so I smiled knowingly and continued to do so until he concluded, “That...