SOURCE: "Such Stuff as Dreams: The Poetry of Howard Nemerov," in Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith Presented to Clyde S. Kilby, edited by Charles A. Huttar, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971, pp. 365-85.

In the following essay, Olsen provides a stylistic and thematic overview of Nemerov's poetry, focusing on the unifying elements in his works.

The serious and the funny are one. The purpose of Poetry is to persuade, fool, or compel God into speaking.

—Howard Nemerov, in a letter to Robert D. Harvey.

The poetry of Howard Nemerov is conventional and con versational; it has been called "academic" and even pro saic. His best poetry, however, is among the best American poetry written since World War II, partly because it is poetry that comes so close to being prose. Much postwar poetry, in reaction to the Eliot-Pound influence, attempts to communicate...