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Lorine Niedecker--1903-1970

~Allen Ginsburg's brief poem for Lorine Niedecker~

For L.N. by Allen Ginsberg

as her breath was
now her body,

lonely poet
far from cities

one in the world.

Wisconsin Poet, Lorine Niedecker, has been described as "one of America's greatest unknown poet."

An appreciative reader wrote, "And Niedecker does this amazing thing where words which have multiple definitions can be read in many ways, and the poem's meaning shifts with each new reading. It's difficult to explain, but trust me, once you learn to see it in her stuff, it's impressive."

Lorine Niedecker lived most of her life in a remote part of Wisconsin, on the Black Hawk Island of the turbulent Rock River near Fort Atkinson, Her father made his living seining carp out of Lake Koshkonong and tending bar. She attended Beloit College for two years (1922-24), but when her mother became totally deaf Nidecker returned home to help take care of her. A brief marriage to a local boy ended in divorce. She worked, first at the public library, then at a radio station, and from 1944 to 1950 as a proofreader for Hoard’s Dairyman, a job made difficult by her extremely poor eyesight. In 1951 her mother died, both deaf and blind; her father died three years later, leaving her with two houses that had to be foreclosed and very little money. From 1957 to 1962 she was employed by the Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital as a cleaning woman, sterilizing the dishes and utensils in the kitchen and scrubbing the cafeteria floors. Every day she walked the five miles or so to the hospital and back again to her one-and-a-half room cabin without plumbing on the riverbank. In 1963 at the age of fifty-nine, she married Albert Millen, a man who evidently had no idea she wrote poetry and who spent a good deal of time at the local tavern. But he also took her on trips to South Dakota and around Lake Superior and seems to have been the companion she needed at this stage of her life. She was looking forward to a period of less housework and more time to write when in 1970 she had a stroke and died.

In her early years as a poet, Lorine Niedecker was concerned with two issues: capturing the simple rhythms of American speech and capturing the complexity implicit in life's simplicity. Because of this, Niedecker's poetry often appears easy and overly simplistic at first glance, but takes on additional depth and meaning upon further study. A poem such as "My Friend Tree" can be used with Reading students to introduce poetry as an accessible medium of linguistic play. This poem can then be reused in more advanced classes to discuss simplistic meter and how its spatial disruption can lead to alternate textual emphasis and meaning. Issues such as violence within a poem about friendship and what that might suggest can be alternative readings.

~My friend tree~by Lorine Niedecker~

My friend tree

I sawed you down

but I must attend an older friend

the sun

 

Niedecker is an interesting figure on the poetic stage because of her changes of poetic style from the 30's to the 60's and because of her direct affiliation with several poets in the Modernist movement of the 30's and 40's. Niedecker worked closely with Louis Zukofsky, the founder of the Objectivist Movement, on her poems. She also knew some of the poets associated with the Imagist movement, such as William Carlos Williams, who she met through Zukofsky, and George Oppen. As her poetry progressed, Niedecker slid away from the Objectivist movement as a strict discipline and began to perfect the serial form for her long poems. Niedecker is compared not only to the male poet precursors of the Modernist movement, but also to Marianne Moore and stylistically to Emily Dickinson. A comparative study of Niedecker's work with contemporaries such as Williams would serve to illustrate poetic parallels within the modernist movement, as well as its trajectory into postmodernism.

~Lorine Niedecker, "I rose from marsh mud"~

I rose from marsh mud
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch
the stain secret collects.
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.

 

~You Are My Friend by Lorine Niedecker~

You are my friend--
you bring me peaches
and the high bush cranberry

you carry

my fishpole

you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit

nothing in it

but my hand

 

~Sorrow Moves in Wide Waves by Lorine Niedecker~

Sorrow moves in wide waves,
it passes, lets us be.
It uses us, we use it,
it's blind while we see.

Consciousness is illimitable,
too good to forsake
tho what we feel be misery
and we know will break.

Old Mother turns blue and from us,
"Don't let my head drop to the earth.
I'm blind and deaf." Death from the heart,
a thimble in her purse.

"It's a long day since last night.
Give me space. I need
floors. Wash the floors, Lorine!
Wash clothes! Weed!"

~He lived¡XChildhood summers~

He lived¡XChildhood summers
thru bare feet
then years of money's lack
and heat

beside the river-out of flood
came his wood, dog,
woman, lost her, daughter
prologue

to planting trees. He buried carp
beneath the rose
where grass-still
the marsh rail goes.

To bankers on high land
he opened his wine tank.
He wished his only daughter
to work in the bank

but he'd given her a source
to sustain her
a weedy speech,
a marshy retainer.

 

~Remember my little granite pail?~

Remember my little granite pail?
The handle of it was blue.
Think what's got away in my life-
Was enough to carry me thru

 

 

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