 Poetry: May 17, 2023 Issue [#11973] |
This week: Howard Nemerov Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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| This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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The Makers
by Howard Nemerov
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
Insomnia I
by Howard Nemerov
Some nights it's bound to be your best way out,
When nightmare is the short end of the stick,
When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe
To walk at night, when waking is the only way
You have of distancing your wretched dead,
A growing crowd, and escaping out of their
Time into yours for another little while;
Then pass ghostly, a planet in the house
Never observed, among the sleeping rooms
Where children dream themselves, and thence go down
Into the empty domain where daylight reigned;
Reward yourself with drink and a book to read,
A mystery, for its elusive gift
Of reassurance against the hour of death.
Order your heart about: Stop doing that!
And get the world to be secular again.
Then, when you know who done it, turn out the light,
And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight
Reflective, listen to the whistling earth
In its backspin trajectory around the sun
That makes the planets sometimes retrograde
And brings the cold forgiveness of the dawn
Whose light extinguishes all stars but one.
On February 29th 1920, David and Gertrude Nemerov, welcomed their son Howard Nemerov into the world. The couple lived in New York and owned a department store. Nemerov grew up in a well to do family. He and his sister both displayed a passion for art at an early age. His sister leaned towards visual art while Neverov towards literature. Nemerov attended the Society for Ethical Culture’s Fieldstone School in which he graduated in 1937. Upon graduation Nemerov enrolled at Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard in 1941 with a bachelor's degree.
After college Nemerov enlisted in the U.S Army Air Force where he served as a pilot during World War II. While serving his country he met and married his wife in 1944. After the war ended Nemerov and his wife returned to New York City. It was upon his return to New York that Nemerov started writing his first book, “The Image and the Law” published in 1947. Nemerov was hired after the war to teach literature to veterans at the Hamilton College in New York. He published Guide to the Ruins in 1950 followed by The Salt Garden published in 1955. Nemerov's teaching career took off and he went on to teach at several different colleges all while continuing his writing. Nemerov published prose “The Homecoming Game" in 1957 and "Federigo: Or the Power of Love” in 1954 along with his books and poetry. He published " Mirrors and Windows” in 1958 followed by “The Blue Swallows” in 1967 and a book of poetry, “The Winter Lightning: Selected Poems” in 1968.
In 1969 Nemerov moved to St. Louis and he started teaching at Washington University. While here he carried the title of Distinguished Poet in Residence from 1969 until his death in 1991. He published "The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov,” in 1977, which won Nemerov the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. He was chosen Poet Laureate of the United States in 1988. Nemerov continued writing and publishing with his last book of poetry being published in 1991, “Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems,” 1961-1991
Howard Nemerov died of cancer on July 5, 1991.
(Language warning for next poem)
Walking the Dog
by Howard Nemerov
Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.
We stand while he's enraptured by a bush
Till I can't stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for our relationship
Is patience balancing to this side tug
And that side drag; a pair of symbionts
Contented not to think each other's thoughts.
What else we have in common's what he taught,
Our interest in shit. We know its every state
From steaming fresh through stink to nature's way
Of sluicing it downstreet dissolved in rain
Or drying it to dust that blows away.
We move along the street inspecting shit.
His sense of it is keener far than mine,
And only when he finds the place precise
He signifies by sniffing urgently
And circles thrice about, and squats, and shits,
Whereon we both with dignity walk home
And just to show who's master I write the poem.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
"Forgotten Dreams"
Forgotten Dreams
Oh, how I longed for sweet, tender moments,
of quiet afternoons with a devoted mother.
One who'd offer guiding, encouraging words
followed by a warm embrace; tender in spirit.
What I got instead were countless tears
washing away dreams of what will never be.
No humble pleas asking forgiveness
only promises of hauntings from beyond.
All that remains, decades later, are forgotten dreams.
No peaceful, luminous spirits; only dark, cold shadows.
There are no memories to comfort my wounded soul
or fill the gaps within my shredded heart.
Honorable mention:
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Good luck to all 
