"I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early"
About this Quote
Nemerov is doing two things at once: staking a claim to craft and puncturing the romantic myth that “freedom” in poetry is a final destination. The line has the cool confidence of someone who’s watched a trend arrive, peak, and harden into dogma. “I never abandoned either forms or freedom” refuses the tired binary that pits meter against authenticity. He’s saying: I can do both, and I don’t need to perform my allegiance to either camp.
The sharper barb sits in the next sentences. By insisting that “most of what could be called free verse is in my first book,” he reframes free verse not as a mature liberation but as an early apprenticeship. “I got through that fairly early” lands like a dry aside: free verse as a phase, not a revolution. Subtext: what’s being marketed as daring is often just the default looseness of a beginner, and the real risk might be choosing constraint on purpose.
Context matters. Nemerov wrote in an American mid-century landscape where modernism’s shocks had become institutional style, while formalism kept resurfacing as both refuge and provocation. His stance reads less like nostalgia than a professional diagnosis: freedom without form can become its own kind of conformity, a set of predictable gestures masquerading as spontaneity. The quote works because it’s not anti-free verse; it’s anti-posturing. It defends technique as a mode of independence, not submission.
The sharper barb sits in the next sentences. By insisting that “most of what could be called free verse is in my first book,” he reframes free verse not as a mature liberation but as an early apprenticeship. “I got through that fairly early” lands like a dry aside: free verse as a phase, not a revolution. Subtext: what’s being marketed as daring is often just the default looseness of a beginner, and the real risk might be choosing constraint on purpose.
Context matters. Nemerov wrote in an American mid-century landscape where modernism’s shocks had become institutional style, while formalism kept resurfacing as both refuge and provocation. His stance reads less like nostalgia than a professional diagnosis: freedom without form can become its own kind of conformity, a set of predictable gestures masquerading as spontaneity. The quote works because it’s not anti-free verse; it’s anti-posturing. It defends technique as a mode of independence, not submission.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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