Style
Flaubert wanted to write a
About nothing.
It was to have no
And be sustained upon the style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising
The abyss, or like the little
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a
That breaks, but do not
Till they look down.
He never wrote that novel,
And neither did he write another
That would have been called La Spirale,
Wherein the hero's fortunes were to
In dreams, while his walking life disintegrated.
Even so, for these two
We thank the master.
They can be read,
With difficulty, in the spirit alone,
Are not so wholly lost as certain
Burned at Alexandria, flooded at Florence,
And are never taught at universities.
Moreover, they are not deformed by style,
That fire that eats what it illuminates.
Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York.
He died of cancer at his home in University City,
Missouri on July 5th 1991.
Howard Nemerov
Other author posts
Young Woman
Naked before the glass she said, “I see my body as no man has, Nor any shall unless I wed And naked in a stranger’s house Stand timid beside his bed There is no pity in the flesh ” “Or else I shall grow old,” she said, “Alone, and c...
The Author To His Body On Their Fifteenth Birthday 29 ii 80
“There’s never a dull moment in the human body ” —The Insight Dear old equivocal and closest friend, Grand Vizier to a weak bewildered king,
The War In The Air
For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead, Who rarely bothered coming home to die But simply stayed away out there In the clean war, the war in the air Seldom the ghosts come back bearing their tales Of hitting the earth, the incompress...
The Murder Of William Remington
It is true, that even in the best-run state Such things will happen; it is true, What’s done is done The law, whereby we hate Our hatred, sees no fire in the flue But by the smoke, and not for thought alone It punishes, but for the thing...
