230 Poetry for Students
merov for a lack of discipline: “too many [poems]
lack the discipline of the writer’s art. Good pieces
are marred by a slovenly intrusion of slang and
awkward phrase, and fail, since Mr. Nemerov’s ear
dares not be true to an authentic impulse. He slights
accent and rhythm for the sake of being fashion-
able.” Nemerov’s “schizophrenia,” according to
Salomon, derives from the fact that he “must be
modern and his modernity consists also of a stud-
ied carelessness of expression ... it is incredible
that a skillful poet would knowingly obtrude such
haphazard writing on the public. In the name of
modernity, it is done by design.”
Other critics share Salomon’s and Koch’s am-
bivalent attitude about Guide to the Ruins.The
Hartford Courant’sMorse Allen remarks that “Mr.
Nemerov in his disorder has produced these poems,
and anyone who wishes to share in his disgrun-
tledness should read them.” In the New Haven Reg-
ister,J.P. Brennan notes that “Nemerov is too of-
ten carried away by his subject matter.” The poet
and critic David Daiches, writing for the Yale Re-
view,finds “a curious emptiness ... generalized im-
agery which does not appear to be wedded together
by a dominating vision ... Too many of the poems
lack a burning core to mould the pattern and im-
agery of the whole into a compelling shape.” Will
Wharton of the St. Louis Post-Dispatchdeplores
the poems’ “uniformly querulous and carping
tone,” and in the New Leader,Harry Smith ad-
monishes Nemerov for “an academic mastery of
the superficial techniques of modernism does not
insure good or interesting poetry.”
“The Phoenix” itself has not received a great
deal of attention. However, one critic, Julia
Bartholomay, writing in her 1972 study of Ne-merov entitled The Shield of Perseus,argues that
the poem is about “the idea that words, besides be-
ing denotative and connotative, are also reflexive,
being about themselves.” She compares the poem
to Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle” and
concludes that “the two visions of the universe
[Nemerov’s and Shakespeare’s] are able to corre-
spond, despite the differences in the poets’ lenses,
because of the bifocal nature of imagination.”Criticism
Greg Barnhisel
Greg Barnhisel holds a Ph.D. in American lit-
erature. In this essay, he discusses how Nemerov
frames his depiction of the phoenix so as to em-
phasize the transcultural nature of the myth.Originating in the mythology of ancient Egypt,
the figure of the phoenix was adopted by the Greeks
and the Romans, and as a consequence became a
part of the Western cultural tradition. In his short,
simple poem about “The Phoenix,” Howard Ne-
merov retells the story of the phoenix, but in his
retelling he emphasizes the paradoxical nature of
the story. Although this story has persisted for mil-
lenia, Nemerov suggests, and although the story has
been transmogrified into other, similar stories (es-
pecially the Christ story), it is in fact a terrifying
story, profoundly other to our tradition and to the
values that our culture holds. Nemerov even uses
the form of his poem—its rhythm, construction,
and rhyme—to allude to one of his predecessor po-
ets who, like the figure of the phoenix, brought
forth the strangeness and foreignness at the roots
of our beliefs.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,the
mythical phoenix was a bird, as large as an eagle,
with a brilliant gold plumage and a beautiful cry.
Only one phoenix existed on earth at any one time,
and the bird had a tremendously long lifespan of
no less than five hundred years. When its death
came near, the bird built a bier, or a funeral pyre,
of aromatic branches, spices, and other precious
combustibles. It then threw itself on the fire and
was consumed. From the ashes a new phoenix
arose, which would embalm its father/predecessor
in myrrh and bring the ashes to Egypt’s ‘Heliopo-
lis,’ or the City of the Sun, where the ashes would
be placed on the altar of the sun. (The bird, not co-
incidentally, was associated with sun worship.) The
Encyclopedia Britannica notes, as well, that “a
variant of the story made the dying bird fly to He-The PhoenixIt is a disturbing
story, really, rooted in the
violence and foreignness of
the ancient world. Like the
ancient gods, the phoenix
“comes of flame and dust”
and is both born out of and
consumed in fire.”