Sentences

By Howard Nemerov

In this dazzling collection, Nemerov plays with other forms of poetry, including gnomic verse, sonnets, and lyrics. 'Sentences' reverberates with imaginative approaches to poetry, and the subject matters are equally varied. Poems, such as 'A Christmas Storm,' and 'By Al Leibowitz's Pool' are both charming and fantastic examples of the author's ability with words. Shot through with his trademark sense of the satirical, 'Sentences' is a must for Nemerov fans, and for those looking for an introduction to his work. -

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Jan 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9788728365755

Book preview

Howard Nemerov

Sentences

SAGA Egmont

Sentences

Cover image: Shutterstock

Copyright © 1980, 2023 Howard Nemerov and SAGA Egmont

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9788728365755

1st ebook edition

Format: EPUB 3.0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievial system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor, be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.sagaegmont.com

Saga is a subsidiary of Egmont. Egmont is Denmark’s largest media company and fully owned by the Egmont Foundation, which donates almost 13,4 million euros annually to children in difficult circumstances.

for M again, and more than ever now

The Unexpected Snow was first published in a limited edition by the Narwhal Press.

The author wishes also to record his gratitude to Mrs. M. P. Wirthlin for devising and/or discovering the order of the poems.

1 Beneath

Literature

Is in good hands, it is being written

By liberated sex-maniacs, psychologists

With an eye to higher things, and novelists

Convinced they are psychiatric social-workers

With a mission to the slums of the human heart;

It is being written by disgraced politicians

From the safety of minimum-security prisons

With pastel walls affording them protection from

The lower class of criminal while they write

Of finding Jesus, Who has given them

The hundred thousand dollar advance against

The major motion picture soon to be made;

And now new generations of trained chimpanzees

Are manning their machines, moving their lips,

Coming along slowly, all thumbs and unopposable.

The Serial

The last year’s phone books lying in the rain

With other garbage to be taken away

Are obsolescing programs that contain

The dramatis personae of a play

So vast its purposes and plot

Go ramifying out of mortal sight

In intricate radiations, rise and rot;

Here lie the yellow pages and the white,

Going concerns and bankrupt, where the dead

Hide with the living in the book of life,

The slowly moving serial unread

Whose singles with the husband and the wife

Are persons parted, who as they leave the stage

Get quietly stood in for, page by