SOURCE: Pratt, William. A review of Trying Conclusions. World Literature Today 66 (summer 1992): 518-19.

In the following review, Pratt praises Nemerov's last volume of poetry and his mastery of his craft.

Howard Nemerov personally selected the contents of his fourteenth and final volume of poetry, Trying Conclusions, including over a hundred poems from earlier collections published during a career of thirty years, along with twenty-four new poems written during the period 1988-91, the last three years of his life—two of them as poet laureate of the United States. It was a distinguished career, and readers now have the opportunity of appraising Nemerov's work as a whole, keeping in mind what he said of himself: that he could not make a living writing poetry but that he could make a good living writing about writing poetry.

The poetry he wrote justified the career, since it was always intelligent, deft...