SOURCE: A review of The Western Approaches: Poems 1973-75, in The Yale Review, March, 1976, pp. 425-42.

In the excerpt below, Howard praises The Western Approaches, calling it Nemerov's "wisest" book.

Three years ago, when [Nemerov] published Gnomes and Occasions, even the vivid and lovable poems in that book were spiked and spooked by so many sour epigrams and put-downs of Others that it seemed Howard Nemerov must have forgotten Marianne Moore's hard truth: there never was a war that was not inward. Were all the enemies out there, one wondered, could none of the problems be played closer to the chest, even the medicine chest, than so much snarling seemed to suggest? Of course there were, as I say, vivid and lovable poems in the book—Nemerov is the master of his generation (he is fifty-seven), and since Auden's death he is the only poet of that generation...