SOURCE: Myers, D. G. “A Career in Literature.” Commentary 92 (November 1991): 60-62.

In the following review of Trying Conclusions and A Howard Nemerov Reader, Myers summarizes Nemerov's poetic career as an almost-sacred calling.

During a 50-year career, Howard Nemerov, who died this past July, became one of the most widely honored poets in America. His Collected Poems (1977) received the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Later volumes won the Bollingen Prize and a National Medal for the Arts in Poetry. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Academy of American Poets, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For a year he was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and for two more years he was the nation's Poet Laureate. Nemerov's career was proof (if proof were needed) of the deference shown to poetry by the culture at large. His...