Howard Nemerov: A Distinguished Man of Letters in America
Here are a few lines from one of his well known poem entitled: The Makers
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.
From: http://www.favoritepoem.org/poems/nemero...
This poem brings to the reader’s attention that perhaps the poets of the past wrote with much ornamental language; Nemerov suggests the early writers presented events and experiences which were shrouded with lofty words. This leaves the readers of the future lacking the ability to connect or identify with how people of long ago experienced life. There are simple references made to star, water and stone, but there lacks the specific relationship between these elements and the people who named them.
To read more poems online written by this third American Poet Laureate, check out http://www.newtrix.com/poems/hn-poems.ht...
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