SOURCE: "Interim Report," in Poetry (Chicago), Vol. CII, No. 6, September, 1963, pp. 389-90.

Below, Carruth calls most of the poems in The Next Room of the Dream "wisecracks " and discusses what he considers Nemerov's "technicalfailures."

Nemerov on poetic vision:

The poet hopes to articulate a vision concerning human life; he hopes to articulate it truly. He may not be much of a poet, he may not be much of a human being, the vision is not so special either; but it is what he hopes to do.

This "vision" need not be thought of in religious terms, as a dramatic one-shot on the road to Damascus; its articulation may be slow indeed, and spread over many works; the early and late parts of it may elucidate one another, or encipher one another still more deeply.

For the substance of this vision the poet listens, he watches, and when he...