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broadcasts on Italian state radio, and many people
felt that this was a treasonous act. (Pound argued
that the content of his broadcasts was never deter-
mined by the Fascist authorities.) Disgraced, de-
pressed, and shamed, Pound seemed to have de-
parted the public eye, perhaps for good.
But that year, Pound published the latest in-
stallment of his long poem, The Cantos.This book,
called The Pisan Cantos,because much of it had
been written while Pound was incarcerated in an
Army detention camp in Pisa, Italy, won the first
Bollingen Prize for Poetry, an award sponsored by
the Library of Congress. Immediately a furor was
sparked. How could Pound be given an award for
a book of poetry that, on its first page, mourns Mus-
solini? How could a traitor be given an award by
the same government that had so recently wanted
to execute him?
The controversy soon stopped focusing on
Pound and became a debate about the proper way to
look at poetry, or art in general, and about what the
relationship of art and politics should be. The Bollin-
gen judges defended their decision, saying that the
aesthetic value of the book was their only criteria.
Others, such as the poet and critic Robert Hillyer,
shot back that it was impossible for vile political sen-
timents not to detract from a book’s aesthetic value.
Hillyer, writing in the Saturday Review of Litera-
ture,argues that a new poetic orthodoxy, epitomized
by T.S. Eliot, wanted to make poetry hermetic,
closed, and to take it out of public life by drowning
it in obscurity. Hillyer’s “common-sense” approach
to poetry came under fire by both leftists and right-
wingers, who felt that art must be given leeway to
examine and express all political opinions.
In the midst of this controversy Nemerov be-
gan his career as a poet. Nemerov’s early review-
ers notes how his work demonstrates the influence
of Eliot and, to a lesser extent, of Pound, but at this
time it would have been hard to find a poet who
was not influenced by these poets. Nemerov was
as much influenced by Allen Tate or W.H. Auden
as he was by Eliot. Nemerov’s poetry, seen in ret-
rospect, was actually rejecting the modernist mod-
els set forth by Pound and Eliot and the school of
criticism (known as the New Criticism) that argued
for the superiority of modernism. Instead, Nemerov
looked to the past for his inspirations. Using rhyme
(which was almost unknown among the mod-
ernists) and regular stanza form, Nemerov rebels
against the orthodoxy of the avant-garde.
The Pound-Eliot orthodoxy ruled the Ameri-
can poetry scene for decades, largely because the
most influential cultural critics and literature pro-
fessors had grown up in the era when Pound and
Eliot were revolutionizing the literary world. Ne-
merov, who has never gained the respect that other,
more modernist-influenced poets have enjoyed,
combined many of the innovations of modernism
with a look back to traditional forms of verse. In
this, he prefigures many poets of today, such as
John Ashbery, Charles Wright, and W.S. Merwin.Critical Overview
Although he had a great deal of success and be-
came a very prominent poet, Howard Nemerov
never has been a great favorite of academics, and
as a result today he is not much read. Part of the
problem is that Nemerov bucked trends: at a time
(the 1940s and 1950s) when T.S. Eliot’s and Ezra
Pound’s brand of literary modernism and experi-
mentation dominated the world of English poetry,
Nemerov looked back to traditional forms and reg-
ular rhythms. Nemerov did not reject modernism
in the way that other poets—Peter Viereck, for in-
stance, or Philip Larkin—did. However, neither did
Nemerov fully embrace modernism’s allusiveness,
difficulty, and radical experimentation.
“The Phoenix” appeared in Nemerov’s second
collection of verse, Guide to the Ruins.Critics have
responded to Nemerov’s poetry with appreciation
but rarely with eagerness or enthusiasm. The
prominent reviewer Vivienne Koch, writing on
Guide to the Ruinsin the Sewanee Review,re-
marked on Nemerov’s extensive poetic ambitions
and said that he “is diligent, and explores with con-
siderable ingenuity the possibilities of a great many
traditional forms.” “I should guess that Mr. Ne-
merov will eventually prove a worthy contender for
high honors among the poets of his generation,”
Koch added. But she is not entirely positive about
his book: “he has not entirely mastered his influ-
ences,” she feels. But ultimately, she sees Nemerov
as a talented, if limited, poet. “While I do not
think,” she concludes, “we can expect any en-
largement of the capacity for sensuous appreciation
... his sincerity and his sharp intellectual control
will, no doubt, reap their proper increments.”
I.L. Salomon, writing for the Saturday Review
of Literature,is even less positive about Nemerov,
and echoes, in harsher terms, some of Koch’s crit-
icisms. Nemerov “suffers from poetic schizophre-
nia,” he says, because Nemerov imitates not the
best aspects but the worst that his “masters ([T.S.]
Eliot, [W.H.] Auden, [Allen] Tate) have imposed
on a generation of poets.” Salomon criticizes Ne-The Phoenix