SOURCE: Rosenthal, M. S. “Epilogue: American Continuities and Crosscurrents.” In The New Poets: American and British Poetry since World War II, pp. 310-12. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

In the following excerpt from his book on American and British poets, Rosenthal identifies Nemerov as an independent writer not attached to a particular school of poetry.

The versatile American poet Howard Nemerov, has an extraordinarily varied body of excellent work to his credit. It ranges from light but telling satirical comment to the very serious, morbidly brilliant sequence ‘The Scales of the Eyes,’ and includes touching buffoonery such as ‘Lot Later’ (in which the biblical Lot tells his story in the language of a modern American-Jewish businessman) and the archaically elegant, eerie formality of ‘The Goose Fish.’ Sheer humane intelligence with a sharply ironic edge carries Nemerov a good distance, and ‘The Scales of the Eyes’ reveals a sensibility...