The collected poems of Howard Nemerov

The Image and the law (1947)

I. Europe

The frozen city

From a record of disappointment

The truth of the matter

Two poems

The stare of the man from the provinces

Portrait of three conspirators

The triumph of education

In the glass of fashion

Who did not die in vain

The place of value

Under the bell jar

The master at a Mediterranean port

Paraphrase from notebooks

The situation does not change

2. Observation of October

Metropolitan Sunday

Warning : children at play

Two side to an outside : meditation from Empson

A morality

Epitaph on a philosopher the reports of whose death have been grossly minimized

The Baron Baedeker blew his nose and, sighing, departed

Crocodile at the ancient tombs

Glass dialectic

Refusal of a kindness offered

A chromium-plated hat : inlaid with scenes from Siegfried

History of a literary movement

3. Autumnal

For the squadron

For W..., who commanded well

September shooting

The soldier who lived through the war

According to his seasons

To the memory of John Wheelwright

Anniversary

Lot's wife

An old photograph

The photograph of a girl

On reading, "The Love and death of Cornet Christopher Rilke"

Sestina I

Sestina II

The fortune teller

Advice from the holy tomb

Unscientific postscript.

Guide to the ruins (1950)

Guide to the ruins

The second-best bed

A poem of Margery Kempe

A song of degrees

On a text : Jonah IV, xi

Nicodemus

To the Babylonians

Virgin and martyr

Mars

Peace in our time

Song

The bacterial war

Redeployment

To a friend

Grand Central, with soldiers, in early morning

A fable of the war

The hero comes home in his hamper, and is exhibited at the World's Fair

The brief journey west

Succession

Fragment from correspondence

Fables of the Moscow subway

The old country

Trial and death, a double feature

Sonnet

Carol

Sonnet at Easter

Elegy of last resort

Still life I

Still life II

Still life III

The lives of gulls and children

The earthquake in the west

Praising the poets of that country

Madrigal

Four sonnets

The ecstasies of dialectic

Antigone

Sonnet

A lean and hungry look

The phoenix

The salt garden (1955)

1. Fall song

The winter lightning

Zalmoxis

Dandelions

Midsummer's day

The first leaf

Sunday at the end of summer

A harvest home

The cuckoo king

The pond

2. The scales of the eyes

3. The salt garden

The sanctuary

The gulls

I only am escaped alone to tell thee

The goose fish

4. Dialectical songs

Returning to Europe

Armistice

The vacuum

Young woman

Instructions for use of this toy

An issue of life

Dialogue

The deposition

5. The snow globe

An old picture

Central Park

The quarry

Truth

The market-place

The book of Kells

The priest's curse on dancing

Sleeping beauty

Deep woods.

Mirrors and windows (1958)

1. The mirror

Trees

The town dump

The sunglasses

Storm windows

Shells

The statues in the public gardens

A day on the big branch

An old warplane

Sandpipers

A clock with no hands

2. Lightning storm on Fugi

Home for the holidays

The loon's cry

Sunderland

Moses

Ahasuerus

Orphic scenario

3. The wheel king

Distraction

False Solomon's seal

The murder of William Remington

The old soldiers' home

Suburban prophecy

A primer of the daily round

Epigrams

The fourth of July

Reflexions on the seizure of the Suez

Seven macabre songs

A singular metamorphosis

Lore

Drama

Tale

Endegeeste

Moonshine

Canossa

Student dies in 100 yard dash

4. Maia

Cloud seeding

The map-maker on his art

Brainstorm

Limits

To Lu Chi

Art song

Writing

Painting a mountain stream

Sarabande

Steps for dancer

The dancer's reply

Holding the mirror up to nature

New poems (1960)

Moment

Runes

On certain wits

To H.M.

Maestria

Going away

Life cycle of common man

Boom!

Mrs. Mandrill

The view from an attic window

Death and the maiden

Angel and stone

The remorse for time

Mousemeal

The icehouse in summer.

The next room of the dream (1962)

1. Effigies

To Clio, muse of history

Santa Claus

To the mannequins

Fontenelle

The iron characters

Don Juan to the statue

Journey of the snowmen

The Daily Globe

A picture

Nothing will yield

One forever alien

A predecessor of Perseus

2. Emblems

A spell before winter

Human things

Winter exercise

Idea

Somewhere

De Anima

The dial tone

Goldfish

Polonius passing through a stage

The view from Pisgah

Maiden with orb and planets

The first point of Aries

The dragonfly

The junction, on a warm afternoon

Blue suburban

These words also

Vermeer

At a country hotel

The end of summer school

Burning the leaves

Elegy for a nature poet

The fall again

3. Vaudeville & Critique

Lot later

The private eye

To David, about his education

An interview

Gnomes

Realities

Debate with the rabbi

To the Bleeding Hearts Association of American novelists

The poet at forty

From the desk of the Laureate : for immediate release

Make big money at home! Write poems in spare time!

On the threshold of his greatness, the poet comes down with a sore throat

Metamorphoses

Lion & honeycomb

4 Endor

5 Cain.

The blue swallows (1967) 1. Legends

The first day

Creation of anguish

Landscape with figures

The distances they keep

Learning by doing

In the commercial gardens

The cherry tree

A life

Growing a ghost

Epitaph

The view

The human condition

The companions

Sarajevo

This, that & the other

To a scholar in the stacks

Lobsters

An old colonial imperialist

Beyond the pleasure principle

Departure of the ships

2. The great society

The night before Christmas

Sunday

Enthusiasm for hats

A way of life

Money

Make love not war

A Negro cemetery next to a White one

At the airport

Presidential address to a party of exiles

To the governor & legislature of Massachusetts

A full professor

Grace to be said before committee meetings

A relation of art and life

A modern poet

On the platform

Cybernetics

Keeping informed in D.C.

The great society, mark X

The dream of flying comes of age

Grace to be said at the supermarket

August, 1945

Christmas morning

3. Figures

The flame of a candle

Between the window and the screen

Decorated skull in a university museum

Dead river

The ropes's end

Projection

In the black museum

The race

Sightseers

Thought

Style

Celestial globe

One way.

4. The blue swallows

The blue swallows

The May Day dancing

The breaking of rainbows

The beekeeper speaks...and is silent

The mud turtle

Summer's elegy

Two girls

For Robert Frost, in the Autumn, in Vermont

The sweeper of ways

Small moment

Firelight in sunlight

Interiors

Gnomes & occasions (1973)

1. Quaerendo invenietis

Prism

One moment in eternity

A memory of my friend

Solipsism & solecism

Philosophy

The God of this world

Extract from memoirs

Being of three minds

Lines & circularities

Brueghel: the triumph of time

Druidic rimes

2. Zander on God

The death of God

Power to the people

Morning sun

The poverty programs

On getting out of Vietnam

Thirtieth anniversary report of the class of '41

New weapons in the old war

History of hair from World War II to the present

Of experience

The most expensive picture in the world

On being a member of the jury for a poetry prize

Mystery story

Ars poetica

What kind of guy was he?

To my least favorite reviewer

To the poets

Epitaph

3. The tapestry

A riddle the Sphinx forgot

Small moon

September, the first day of school

After commencement

On being asked for a peace poem

The world as Brueghel imagined it

Two views of a philosopher

To D..., dead by her own hand

Hope

The painter dreaming in the scholar's house

Myth & ritual

The crossing

Late butterflies

The rent in the screen

The beautiful lawn sprinkler

The puzzler

Snowflakes

Threshold

Kicks

Creation myth on a moebius band

Behavior

The poet as Eagle Scout

Questions

Analogue

Above

Knowledge

Hide & seek

Beginner's guide.

The western approaches (1975)

1. The way

Fugue

Late late show

The doomsday books

Strange metamporphosis of poets

Cosmic comics

The metaphysical automobile

Watching football on TV

Route two

Ozymandias II

He

Two pair

Nebuchadnezzar, solus

Einstein & Freud & Jack

Waiting rooms

Capitals

Critics

Novelists

Wolves in the zoo

The common wisdom

The western approaches

A memory of the war

To the rulers

Boy with Book of Knowledge

Amnesty

Eve

Pockets

Hero with girl and Gorgon

The backward look

2. The ground

The dependencies

Figures of thought

Late summer

A cabinet of seeds displayed

Flower arrangements

Walking down Westgate in the fall

Ginkgoes in fall

Again

The consent

Equations of a villanelle

A common saw

Near the old people's home

Nature morte

Seeing things

First snow

Childhood (a translation of Rainer Maria's Rilke's "Kindheit")

3. The mind

Casting

Fiction

Reflexion of a novelist

The weather of the world

There

Nightmare

Exasperations of a novelist

Learning the trees

Conversing with paradise

Playing the inventions

The measure of poetry

The four ages

The thought of trees

Drawing lessons

Du reve, de la mathematique, et de la mort

Translation

Speculation

Gyroscope

Playing skittles

TV

The spy

The old days

Aftermath

The banquet (a translation of Dante Alighieri's Convito, Dissertation 2, Canzone 1)

An ending

Origin

Plane.