Howard Nemerov

For The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977), he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize.

Howard Nemerov studied at Harvard University, Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Harvard College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is literature and educational system. Residence is recorded at New York City and University City. Employment is recorded with Washington University in St. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Bollingen Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and National Medal of Arts.

• Name — Howard Nemerov • Born — 29 February 1920 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Died — 5 July 1991 • Place of death — University City, Missouri, U.S. • Occupation — Poet • Education — Harvard University (BA) • Children — 3, including Alexander Nemerov • Relatives — Diane Arbus (sister) Doon Arbus (niece) Amy Arbus (niece) • Awards — National Book AwardPulitzer Prize

Nemerov was born on February 29, 1920, in New York City; his parents were David Nemerov (who among other things was a national director of the Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith) and Gertrude Russek. The Nemerovs were a Russian Jewish couple who lived in New York City and he rose to become chairman of Russeks, a Fifth Avenue women's wear department store. Howard's younger sisters were the photographer Diane Arbus and sculptor/painter Renee Nemerov Sparkia Brown. Their father's interests extended to art connoisseurship, painting, philanthropy, and photography. 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 a bachelor's degree. 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. In 1999, Washington University dedicated a dormitory, The Howard Nemerov House, to him. 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 and 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, the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, and the first Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. 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.

Nemerov's work is formalist. He wrote 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. Nemerov's "Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry" is frequently taught as an example of an Ars Poetica as it describes the nearly imperceptible change between rain and snow while still maintaining the formal poetic elements of rhyme and meter. A critical review by Mary Kinzie said of it: "the poem imperceptibly thickens itself out of the stream of prose." Nemerov also published a short story in the book Stories Selected from the Unexpected by Bennett Cerf under the pseudonym Joseph Cross called "Exchange of Men". http: www.philsp.com/homeville/anth/s194.htm

Nemerov was brother to photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus and father to art historian Alexander Nemerov, Professor of the History of Art and American Studies at Stanford University. One of Nemerov's hobbies were whistling, something he did often while working and while a student at Bennington College.

• The Melodramatists (1949) • Federigo: Or the Power of Love (1954) • The Homecoming Game (1957) • The Commodity of Dreams and Other Stories (1959) • Journal of the Fictive Life (1965) • Stories, Fables and Other Diversions (1971)

• Rodney Stenning Edgecombe. A Reader's Guide to the Poetry of Howard Nemerov (Poetry Salzburg, 1999)

Howard Nemerov worked in literature and educational system. He was employed by Washington University in St. Louis and Brandeis University. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Letters. He worked at New York City and University City.

Howard Nemerov is recorded as having studied at Harvard University, Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Harvard College. Recognition and collections. Nemerov received Guggenheim Fellowship, Bollingen Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Medal of Arts, United States Poet Laureate and St. Louis Literary Award.