Lorine Niedecker Collected Works
Edited by Jenny Penberthy
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the General Endowment of the University of California Press Associates.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
All of Lorine Niedecker's work appears here by permission of her literary executor, Cid Corman.
Page i: Photographs of Lorine Niedecker (1922, 1967) courtesy of Bonnie Roub.
Pages ii, 19, and 301: Ella MacBride, Eryngium, an Arrangement, ca. 1924 (detail). Courtesy of Martin-Zambito Fine Arts, Seattle, Washington.
© 2002 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Niedecker, Lorine.
[Works. 2002]
Collected works / Lorine Niedecker ; edited by Jenny Penberthy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-22433-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-520-22434-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Penberthy, Jenny Lynn, 1953- II. Title.
PS3527.I6 2002
811'.54—dc21
2001005376
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z3 9.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
for Kenneth Cox
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Life and Writing
This Edition
Poems 1928-1936
Transition
Mourning Dove
SPIRALS
Promise of Brilliant Funeral
When Ecstasy is Inconvenient
PROGRESSION
Canvass
For exhibition
Tea
Beyond what
I heard
Memorial Day
Stage Directions
Synamism
Will You Write Me a Christmas Poem?
NEXT YEAR OR I FLY MY ROUNDS TEMPESTUOUS
DOMESTIC AND UNAVOIDABLE
THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOLDING COMPANY
FANCY ANOTHER DAY GONE
News
1936-1945
O let's glee glow as we go
Troubles to win
A country's economics sick
Lady in the Leopard Coat
Jim Poor's his name
Scuttle up the workshop,
There was a bridge once that said I'm going
When do we live again Ann,
Missus Dorra
No retiring summer stroke
To war they kept
Petrou his name was sorrow
The eleventh of progressional
Young girl to marry,
I spent my money
Trees over the roof
NEW GOOSE
Don't shoot the rail!
Bombings
Hop press
Ash woods, willow, close to shore,
The music, lady,
For sun and moon and radio
She had tumult of the brain
My coat threadbare
Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths?
Not feeling well, my wood uncut.
Remember my little granite pail?
A lawnmower's one of the babies I'd have
My man says the wind blows from the south,
Du Bay
I'm a sharecropper
Here it gives the laws for fishing thru the ice—
On Columbus Day he set out for the north
Black Hawk held: In reason
We know him—Law and Order League—
The clothesline post is set
I said to my head, Write something.
Grampa's got his old age pension,
There's a better shine
The museum man!
That woman!—eyeing houses.
Hand Crocheted Rug
They came at a pace
I doubt I'll get silk stockings out
To see the man who took care of our stock
A monster owl
Gen. Rodimstev's story/(Stalingrad)
Birds' mating-fight
From my bed I see
Asa Gray wrote Increase Lapham:
Pioneers
Well, spring overflows the land,
Audubon
van Gogh
What a woman!—hooks men like rugs,
The brown muskrat, noiseless,
The broad-leaved Arrow-head
“NEW GOOSE” MANUSCRIPT
To a Maryland editor, 1943:
Summer's away, I traded my chicks for trees
She was a mourner too. Now she's gone
Seven years a charming woman wore
The land of four o'clocks is here
Just before she died
Brought the enemy down
Nothing nourishing,
The number of Britons killed
Old Hamilton hailed the man from the grocery store:
Motor cars
Allied Convoy/Reaches Russia
Depression years
Coopered at Fish Creek,
A working man appeared in the street
Woman with Umbrella
Automobile Accident
Look, the woods, the sky, our home.
Coming out of Sleep
Voyageurs
I walked/from Chicago to Big Bull Falls (Wausau),
See the girls in shorts on their bicycles
When Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed
Tell me a story about the war.
Poet Percival said: I struck a lode
Terrible things coming up,
1937
Their apples fall down
The government men said Don't plant wheat,
1945-1956
New!
(L.Z.)
Chimney Sweep
Swept snow, Li Po,
Regards to Mr. Glover
Sunday's motor-cars
Let's play a game.
Lugubre for a child
Could You Be Right
Look close
If I were a bird
High, lovely, light,
Letter from Paul
Two old men—
Paul, hello
So this was I
Am I real way out in space
On a row of cabins/next my home
In moonlight lies
The cabin door flew open
The elegant office girl
When brown folk lived a distance
FOR PAUL AND OTHER POEMS
FOR PAUL
Paul
What bird would light
Nearly landless and on the way to water
Understand me, dead is nothing
How bright you'll find young people,
If he is of constant depth
The young ones go away to school
Some have chimes
O Tannenbaum
In the great snowfall before the bomb
Not all that's heard is music. We leave
Tell me a story about the war.
Laval, Pomeret, Pétain
Thure Kumlien
Shut up in woods
Your father to me in your eighth summer:
To Paul now old enough to read:
What horror to awake at night
Sorrow moves in wide waves,
Jes
se James and his brother Frank
May you have lumps in your mashed potatoes
Old Mother turns blue and from us,
I hear the weather
Dead
Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt?
Ten o'clock
Adirondack Summer
The slip of a girl-announcer:
Now go to the party,
Dear Paul:
My father said “I remember
You know, he said, they used to make
He built four houses
In Europe they grow a new bean while here
Paul/when the leaves
I've been away from poetry
I am sick with the Time's buying sickness.
The death of my poor father
To Aeneas who closed his piano
My friend the black and white collie
“Oh ivy green
As I shook the dust
They live a cool distance
Violin Debut
OTHER POEMS
Horse, hello
Energy glows at the lips—
Hi, Hot-and-Humid
Woman in middle life
We physicians watch the juices rise
1937
European Travel/(Nazi New Order)
Depression years
So you're married, young man,
She grew where every spring
I sit in my own house
On hearing/the wood pewee
Along the river
He moved in light
Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance
He lived—childhood summers
I rose from marsh mud,
Dear Mona, Mary and all
Don't tell me property is sacred!
Wartime
February almost March bites the cold.
People, people—
July, waxwings
Old man who seined
Mother is dead
The graves
Kepler
Bonpland
Happy New Year
1957-1959
Linnaeus in Lapland
Fog-thick morning—
Hear
Cricket-song—
Musical Toys
I fear this war
Van Gogh could see
No matter where you are
How white the gulls
Springtime's wide
White
Dusk—
Beautiful girl—
New-sawed
My friend tree
1960-1964
In Leonardo's light
You are my friend—
Come In
The men leave the car
The wild and wavy event
FLORIDA
My life is hung up
Easter
Get a load
Poet's work
Property is poverty—
Now in one year
River-marsh-drowse
Club 26
To foreclose
To my small/electric pump
T. E. Lawrence
As I paint the street
Art Center
HOMEMADE/HANDMADE POEMS
Consider at the outset:
Ah your face
Alcoholic dream
To my pres-/sure pump
Laundromat
March
Something in the water
Santayana's
If only my friend
Frog noise/suddenly stops
In the transcendence
To whom
Margaret Fuller
Watching dan-/cers on skates
Hospital Kitchen
Chicory flower/on campus
Fall (“Early morning corn”)
LZ's
Letter from Ian
Some float off on chocolate bars
I knew a clean man
Scythe
So he said/on radio
I visit/the graves
For best work
The obliteration
Spring
The park/“a darling walk/for the mind”
Who was Mary Shelley?
Wild strawberries
1965-1967
Autumn
Last night the trash barrel
The boy tossed the news
Popcorn-can cover
Truth
Lights, lifts
O late fall
CHURCHILL'S DEATH
The Badlands
A student
Bird singing
Easter Greeting
CITY TALK
As praiseworthy
They've lost their leaves
My mother saw the green tree toad
TRADITION
Autumn Night
Sky
Nothing to speak of
Swedenborg
I lost you to water, summer
I married
You see here
Your erudition
Alone
Why can't I be happy
And what you liked
Cleaned all surfaces
Young in Fall I said: the birds
NORTH CENTRAL
LAKE SUPERIOR
In every part of every living thing
Iron the common element of earth
Radisson:
(The long/canoes)
Through all this granite land
And at the blue ice superior spot
Joliet
Ruby of corundum
Wild Pigeon
Schoolcraft left the Soo—canoes
Inland then
The smooth black stone
I'm sorry to have missed
My Life by Water
TRACES OF LIVING THINGS
Museum
Far reach
TV
We are what the seas
What cause have you
Stone
The eye
For best work
Smile
Fall (“We must pull”)
Years
Unsurpassed in beauty
Human bean
High class human
Ah your face
Sewing a dress
I walked/on New Year's Day
J. F. Kennedy after/the Bay of Pigs
Mergansers
“Shelter”
WINTERGREEN RIDGE
1968-1970
PAEAN TO PLACE
Alliance
Bash
The man of law
Not all harsh sounds displease—
JEFFERSON AND ADAMS
Katharine Anne
War
HARPSICHORD & SALT FISH
THOMAS JEFFERSON
The Ballad of Basil
Wilderness
Consider
Otherwise
Nursery Rhyme
Three Americans
POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE
Blue and white
The soil is poor
Michelangelo
Wallace Stevens
SUBLIMINAL
Sleep's dream
Waded, watched, warbled
Illustrated night clock's
Honest
Night
LZ
Peace
Thomas Jefferson Inside
Foreclosure
HIS CARPETS FLOWERED
DARWIN
Prose and Radio Plays
UNCLE
1951-1952
SWITCHBOARD GIRL
The evening's automobiles…
AS I LAY DYING
from TASTE AND TENDERNESS
Notes and Contents Lists
Notes
Contents Lists That Differ from Order in This Volume
Index of Titles or First Lines
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lorine Niedecker's work has attracted the dedication of extraordinary people, many of whom have contributed to this long-awaited book. I am deeply fortunate
to have met and worked with them.
Cid Corman in Kyoto, Japan, is Niedecker's literary executor and champion. Cid has given me his trust and unstinting support throughout the long years of work on this book and others. Many many thanks to him.
Another friend of Niedecker's, Kenneth Cox, deserves my profound thanks. From London, Kenneth has read and made astute comments on my work for fifteen years. I depend upon his sharp eye and keen mind. This book is dedicated to him.
I very much regret that Gail Roub, Niedecker's friend and champion on home ground in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, did not live to see this book. Gail contributed generously to this and other books on Niedecker with his immediate, unhesitating supply of crucial information, documents, and photographs. He worked energetically to promote Niedecker's recognition both locally and further afield. Bonnie Roub and family continue that work today. Many thanks to them too for their support.
Another Fort Atkinson resident has been essential to my study of Niedecker. Marilla Fuge, voluntary archivist of the Lorine Niedecker Collection in the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, has kept me informed of her ongoing and thorough research into the Niedecker and Kunz family histories, and indeed of all Niedecker-related events in the community. The information she supplies me with is essential to my understanding of Niedecker's life on Black Hawk Island. Contact with Marilla is always a pleasure.
Other members of the Niedecker committee in Fort Atkinson have shown me hospitality. I remember with pleasure Joan and Milo Jones, and Bill and Bobbie Starke.
Karl Gartung and Ann Kingsley in Milwaukee have been warm friends and dedicated inventive promoters of Niedecker's poetry. My thanks to both of them.
Many others have helped me compile this edition. Here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Peter Quartermain deserves particular thanks for his meticulous readings of the final manuscript and for spirited encouragements along the way. For their essential contributions of various kinds, I also thank Eliot Weinberger, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Davidson, Jerry Reisman, Glenna Breslin, Jonathan Williams, Tom Meyer, Harry Gilonis, Alec Finlay, Jonathan Greene, Laura Furman, Sharon Thesen, Michele Leggott, Lisa Robertson, the late Joan Hardwick, Keith Alldritt, Linda McDaniel, David Martin, Rebecca Newth, and Capilano College. Tandy Sturgeon deserves special thanks since it was she who first persuaded the University of California Press to take on the publication of this book. We initially began the project together; after she withdrew, she generously allowed me to continue to use her dissertation disk copy of the text of the poems.
Many libraries and librarians have given me access to materials and have been generous with their help. I would like to thank Cathy Henderson, Tara Wenger, and Pat Fox at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Gene Bridwell and the late Charles Watts at the Contemporary Literature Collection, W.A.C. Bennett Library at Simon Fraser University; Rodney Phillips at the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library; the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin (Lorine Niedecker Collection); Special Collections at the Stanford University Libraries (Robert Creeley Papers); the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Yale Collection of American Literature); and the Department of Special Collections at Boston University Library (Lorine Niedecker Collection).
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