Nemerov, Howard (1920-1991), was a leading American poet, critic, and novelist. He won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977). Nemerov wrote in a wide variety of styles as a poet, often dealing with nature. He was praised for the direct, witty, accessible, and intelligent quality of his verse. Nemerov served as the United States poet laureate from 1988 to 1990.
Nemerov’s first collection of poems was The Image and the Law (1947). His final collection was Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991 (1991). He wrote three witty and satirical novels: The Melodramatists (1949), Federigo: Or the Power of Love (1954), and The Homecoming Game (1957). His shorter fiction was collected in A Commodity of Dreams (1959) and Stories, Fables, and Other Diversions (1971).
Nemerov was a respected literary critic. His critical essays were published in such collections as Reflections on Poetry and Poetics (1972), Figures of Thought: Speculations on the Meaning of Poetry and Other Essays (1978), and New and Selected Essays (1985). He wrote an autobiography, Journal of the Fictive Life (1965, 1981).
Howard Stanley Nemerov was born on March 1, 1920, in New York City. He graduated from Harvard University in 1941. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1969 to 1990. Diane Arbus, a noted photographer, was his sister. Nemerov died on July 5, 1991.
