Old Poetry Poetry • Poets • Essays • Forums •

John Frederick Nims

I lived from 1913-1999. I was from the USA, and am in the Americas category.

John Frederick Nims was born in 1913. He was the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Six-Cornered Snowflake, Zany in Denim, and Knowledge of the Evening.



Long affiliated with the magazine "Poetry", he was its editor from 1978 to 1984, and he taught at many distinguished universities and workshops in America and abroad. Among the numerous honors he received for his work are the "American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature", the "Aiken-Taylor Award", the "O. B. Hardison Award", and the "Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize".



He also translated several books of verse, most recently The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, and wrote the highly acclaimed Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry.



Mr. Nims died in 1999.









Bibliography source: Poetry Daily

My poetry

  • Love Poem
    My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
    At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
    25 lines
  • The Young Ionia
    If you could come on the late train for
        The same walk
    51 lines
  • Tide Turning
    Through salt marsh, grassy channel where the shark's
    A rumor &mdash lean, alongside &mdash rides out boat;
    44 lines
  • Portrait
    Seeing in crowded restaurants the one you love
    You wave at the door, tall girl in imperious fur,
    15 lines
  • Blind Joy
    Crude seeing’s all our joy: could we discern
    The cold dark infinite vast where atoms burn
    3 lines
  • Madrigal In Time Of War
    Beside the rivers of the midnight town
    Where four-foot couples love and paupers drown,
    23 lines
  • Parting: 1940
    Not knowing in what season this again
    Not knowing when again the arms outyearning
    27 lines
  • Conclusion
    legato con amore in un volume
    ciò che per l’universo si squaderna . . .
    29 lines
  • Decline And Fall
    We had a city also. Hand in hand
    Wandered happy as travellers our own land.
    76 lines
  • Christmas Tree
    This seablue fir that rode the mountain storm
    Is swaddled here in splints of tin to die.
    37 lines
  • Isaiah’s Coal
    what more can man desire?
    40 lines

Start a forum topic about this poet

, Content