The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov

Winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The former US Poet Laureate twists the commonplaces of everyday life.

“The world causes in Nemerov a mingled revulsion and love, and a hopeless hope is the most attractive quality in his poems, which slowly turn obverse to reverse, seeing the permanence of change, the vices of virtue, the evanescence of solidities and the errors of truth.” —Helen Vendler, The New York Times Book Review

“Howard Nemerov is a witty, urbane, thoughtful poet, grounded in the classics, a master of the craft. It is refreshing to read his work.” —The Minneapolis Tribune

“Nemerov is a poet of great wit and deep resources. He’s the most unboring poet I know. He can say funny and serious things at the same time, and is the best poet of both wit and seriousness we have now.” —James Dickey, Book Views

“His Collected Poems collect a retrospective of thirty years’ work. Work that is lyric and satiric by turns, work written in couplets, quatrains, blank verse and sometimes prose.” —Christian Science Monitor

“What is common to these themes is not abstraction, but rather, consistently, the most human of concerns—the difficulty of our decisions, of our sharing, of our knowing; the certainty of our suffering. The breadth of accomplishment and depth of insight are one’s most striking impressions from first reading of the Collected Poems, enriched later by the humor, the intricacy, the grace.” —Tom Johnson, The Sewanee Review