SOURCE: "Saying the Life of Things," in American Poetry Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, January/February, 1976, pp. 46-7.

In the positive review of The Western Approaches below, Randall compares Nemerov to English poet William Wordsworth.

If you really want to see something, look at something else. If you want to say what something is, inspect something that it isn't. It might go further, and worse, than that: if you want to see the invisible world, look at the visible one.

—[Howard Nemerov], "On Metaphor," Reflexions on Poetry & Poetics

If you really want to see Howard Nemerov, look at practically anybody else writing today. But I pick a non-controversial foil, Wordsworth, because the comparison is fun and, for me, illuminating. It clarifies both what Nemerov's poetry is, and what it is not.

Wordsworth and Nemerov share the plain style and the same grand epistemological theme. Both write many disarmingly simple poems...