The Nemerovs were a Russian Jewish couple who lived in New York City and he rose to become chairman of Russeks, a Fifth Avenue women's wear department store.

Young Howard was raised in a sophisticated New York City environment where he attended the Society for Ethical Culture's Fieldston School.

Graduated in 1937 as an outstanding student and second-string team football fullback, he commenced studies at Harvard University where, in 1940, he was Bowdoin Essayist, and he received a bachelor's degree.

He married in 1944, and after the war, having earned the rank of first lieutenant, returned to New York with his wife to complete his first book.

"A Primer of the Daily Round" is his most frequently anthologized poem, and highly representative of Nemerov's poetic style.

[14] Nemerov's "Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry" is frequently taught as an example of an Ars Poetica as it describes the nearly imperceptible change between rain and snow while still maintaining the formal poetic elements of rhyme and meter.