Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov
Born	29 February 1920 New York City, New York, USA
Died	5 July 1991 (aged 71) University City, Missouri, USA
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Harvard College

Howard Nemerov (29 February 1920 – 5 July 1991) was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990.^[1] He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. He was brother to photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus and father to art historian Alexander Nemerov, Professor of the History of Art and American Studies at Yale University.

Biography

Born on leap day in New York City, his parents were David Nemerov and Gertrude. His younger sister was the photographer Diane Arbus. The elder Nemerov's talents and interests extended to art connoisseurship, painting, philanthropy, and photography — talents and interests undoubtedly influential upon his son. Young Howard was raised in a sophisticated New York City environment where he attended the Society for Ethical Culture's Fieldston School. Graduated in 1937 as an outstanding student and second string team football fullback, he commenced studies at Harvard University where, in 1940, he was Bowdoin Essayist and he received bachelor's degree at this university. Throughout World War II, he served as a pilot, first in the Royal Canadian Air Force and later the U. S. Army Air Forces. He married in 1944, and after the war, having earned the rank of first lieutenant, returned to New York with his wife to complete his first book.

Nemerov then began teaching, first at Hamilton College and later at Bennington College, Brandeis University, and finally Washington University in St. Louis, where he was Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence from 1969 until his death in 1991. Nemerov's numerous collections of poetry include Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991 (University of Chicago Press, 1991); The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977), which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize; The Winter Lightning: Selected Poems (1968); Mirrors and Windows (1958); The Salt Garden (1955); and The Image of the Law (1947). His novels have also been commended; they include The Homecoming Game (1957), Federigo: Or the Power of Love (1954), and The Melodramatists (1949).

Nemerov received many awards and honors, among them fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and The Guggenheim Foundation, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the National Medal of Arts, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and the first Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.^[2]

Nemerov served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1963 and 1964, as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets beginning in 1976, and two terms as poet laureate of the United States from 1988 to 1990. In 1990 he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Nemerov died of cancer in 1991 in University City, Missouri. The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award was instituted in 1994 to honor him, and by 2008 about 3000 sonnets were entered annually in the associated competition.^[3]

Poetry

Nemerov's work is formalist. He has written almost exclusively in fixed forms and meter. While he is known for his meticulousness and refined technique, his work also has a reputation for being witty and playful. He is compared to John Hollander and Philip Larkin.

"A Primer of the Daily Round" is his most frequently anthologized poem, and highly representative of Nemerov's poetic style. It is an archetypal Elizabethan sonnet, demonstrative of the prosodic creativity for which Nemerov is famous. Another widely appreciated poem is "The War in the Air," which draws on his wartime experience as a pilot.^[4]

Bibliography

Poetry

• The Image of the Law (1947)
• The Vacuum (1955)
• The Salt Garden (1955)
• Mirrors and Windows (1958)
• The Next Room of The Dream: Poems and Two Plays (1962)
• The Blue Swallows (1967)
• The Winter Lightning: Selected Poems (1968)
• Gnomes & Occasions: Poems (1973) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226572528
• The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977) ISBN 9780226572598
• Sentences (1980) ISBN 9780226572628
• War Stories: Poems about Long Ago and Now (1987) ISBN 9780226572437
• Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991 (1992) ISBN 9780226572635
• Grace to be Said at the Supermarket

Prose

• The Melodramatists (1949)
• Federigo: Or the Power of Love (1954)
• The Homecoming Game (1957)
• Journal of the Fictive Life (1965) ISBN 9780226572611

Literary Scholarship

• The Oak in the Acorn: On Remembrance of Things Past and on Teaching Proust, Who Will Never Learn (1987) ISBN 9780807113851

External links

• Pace, Eric (July 7, 1991). "Howard Nemerov, Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Recipient, Dies at 71". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/obituaries/howard-nemerov-poet-laureate-and-pulitzer-recipient-dies-at-71.html?scp=3&sq=Howard%20Nemerov&st=cse&pagewanted=all.
• Academy of American Poets - Biographical Sketch and Links to Poetry
• Poet Laureate Timeline: 1961-1970
• Poetry Foundation - Biography and Links to Poetry
• The Howard Nemerov Papers at Washington University in St. Louis
• St. Louis Walk of Fame