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Alumnus Poet and Marshall Scholar Visits Alma Mater

Nemser was glad to share his writing experiences with English teacher Harry Thomas’ class.

Alex Nemser ’02 wasn’t looking to have his poetry featured in a major Hollywood blockbuster, but when as a senior at Yale the opportunity presented itself, the aspiring poet jumped at the chance. During the filming of the Matt Damon movie The Good Shepherd, Hollywood producers representing Robert De Niro contacted Yale to ask for a period poem to use for one scene. Instead of searching through the college archives for a suitable selection, Nemser seized the opportunity and wrote his own poem for the espionage script.

“I added some ‘shadowy eyes and lurking around of corners’ to fit the mood of the movie…and I’d heard that Hollywood types like choices, so I gave them a few different versions,” Nemser says. “The response was: ‘Mr. De Niro likes option B but he wants to change it a bit’—De Niro’s change was total nonsense grammatically and thematically, but I said ‘I love it!’”

Nemser, who recently received his M.Phil. (master of philosophy) in European Literature in the Faculty of Modern Languages at Oxford, was on campus last month to visit with Upper School English Teacher Harry Thomas’ class.

Although his Oxford degree resulted in an 80-page dissertation on the Russian writer Isaac Babel, Nemser’s time there was punctuated by the writing of poems—several of which he shared and discussed with Thomas’ class. Nemser read three of his works, The Swimmer, To An Astronaut, and most notably Jonah, a contemporary interpretation of the Bible story of Jonah.

Written during his time as a graduate student at Oxford—a period Nemser describes as “very nebulous”—Jonah was constructed during many long walks through London’s botanical gardens and captures the searching, questioning qualities attendant to that activity and inherent in the Jonah story.

Nemser also spoke to students about pursuing writing as a career, noting the irony that the writing field is not always conducive to good writing. In speaking about a brief stint he had as an editor/writer at The New Yorker, Nemser noted, “I think you might learn more about writing by having another unrelated job altogether, a genuine experience—these jobs that seem to be in the writing sphere are in fact often very far from actual ‘writing’.”

During his time as a student at BB&N, Nemser was a regular contributor to The Spectator literary magazine and won the Junior Profile contest. He then matriculated at Yale where he won the Yale freshman writing award and a prestigious Marshall Scholarship which allowed him to study at Oxford College in England. Nemser now writes for The New Republic and works on poetry in his spare time.

CLICK HERE to read poems Nemser shared with BB&N students.