Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works [Paperback]

Lorine Niedecker (Author), Jenny Penberthy (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2002

"The Brontës had their moors, I have my marshes," Lorine Niedecker wrote of flood-prone Black Hawk Island in Wisconsin, where she lived most of her life. Her life by water, as she called it, could not have been further removed from the avant-garde poetry scene where she also made a home. Niedecker is one of the most important poets of her generation and an essential member of the Objectivist circle. Her work attracted high praise from her peers--Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman, Clayton Eshleman--with whom she exchanged life-sustaining letters. Niedecker was also a major woman poet who interrogated issues of gender, domesticity, work, marriage, and sexual politics long before the modern feminist movement. Her marginal status, both geographically and as a woman, translates into a major poetry.
Niedecker's lyric voice is one of the most subtle and sensuous of the twentieth century. Her ear is constantly alive to sounds of nature, oddities of vernacular speech, textures of vowels and consonants. Often compared to Emily Dickinson, Niedecker writes a poetry of wit and emotion, cosmopolitan experimentation and down-home American speech.
This much-anticipated volume presents all of Niedecker's surviving poetry, plays, and creative prose in the sequence of their composition. It includes many poems previously unpublished in book form plus all of Niedecker's surviving 1930s surrealist work and her 1936-46 folk poetry, bringing to light the formative experimental phases of her early career. With an introduction that offers an account of the poet's life and notes that provide detailed textual information, this book will be the definitive reader's and scholar's edition of Niedecker's work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A great modernist finally gets a full tribute with the publication of Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works. A lifetime resident of Wisconsin, Niedecker (1903-1970) was a sort of satellite member of Zukofsky's Objectivist circle, though currents of surrealism, folk poetry and haiku run through her work. Edited by Capilano College English professor Jenny Penberthy (Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet), this comprehensive collection of all of Niedecker's surviving verse includes her well-known New Goose folk poems, as well as early poetry that Niedecker had omitted from the collected works published in her lifetime. It is an indispensable book for anyone interested in modernist writing: "What a scandal Christmas What a scandle Christmas is, a red stick-up to a lily."

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Niedecker (1903-70) is often likened to Emily Dickinson. She, too, remained in the backwater where she was born. Large-scale interest in her work came only years after her death. Her characteristic poems are, like Dickinson's, short or in short stanzas, short-lined, and elliptical. But she wasn't reclusive; she connected with the Objectivists, New York poets "led" by Louis Zukofsky, with whom she had a brief affair and a long correspondence. Very poor, she was a proofreader until her weak vision worsened, and she last labored as a hospital cleaning woman. Whereas Dickinson's poetry is metaphysical, Niedecker's mature work is profoundly physical, sparked by wry, class-conscious humor and usually rooted in her Black Lake Island, Wisconsin, neighborhood. A good introduction to her tenor and concerns is provided by two prose pieces, "Switchboard Girl" and "The Evening's Automobiles," as sharp, energetic, and funny as William Burroughs' best "routines," though utterly lacking Burroughs' obscenity and dadaism. After them, turn to the riverine music and midwestern shrewdness of the poems, comprehensively collected here for the first time. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 494 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; New Ed edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520224345
• ISBN-13: 978-0520224346
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #517,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Objectivist Poet from Wisconsin April 30, 2005

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I first learned of Lorine Niedecker (1903 -- 1970) from reading a selection of her poetry in Volume 2 of the Library of America's Anthology of American Poetry of the Twentieth Century. I was intrigued by the restrained, simple, and succinct character of the poems for two reasons. First, they reminded me opf poetry I knew: of the work of Charles Reznikoff, in particular, and of his fellow-objectivist poets, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and W.C. Williams. I later learned, of course, that Niedecker knew these writers, and was close to them. She was particularly close to Louis Zukofsky, with whom she carried on a forty year correspondence and had a brief affair.

I was also intrigued when I learned that Lorine Niedecker spent most of her life in the small town of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, which is approximately mid-way between Milwaukee and Madison. She lived on a small island called Black Hawk Island outside the town where her family rented cabins and fished. Much of her life was spent in poverty and for several years she was employed scrubbing floors in the local hospital. Most of the poets with whom Niedecker was associated lived in New York City. Although she visited New York City and spent time with Zukofsky, for the most part she learned and practiced her art by herself.

I was familiar with Fort Atkinson because I lived for a short time in my early 20's in Jefferson, Wisconsin, an even smaller town just adjacent to Fort Atkinson. I was there briefly in the early 1970's, just after Niedecker's death (She lived in Milwaukee at the time.) and I don't remember hearing anything about her. Today the town of Fort Atkinson and the local library where Niedecker worked for a time are active in preserving her memory.... I was moved to discover the work of this outstanding modernist poet who lived in obsurity in an area with which I was familiar.

I was grateful to find this collected edition of Niedecker's works edited by Jenny Penberthy, Professor of English at Capilano College, Vancouver. Ms. Penberthy has also edited a recently-published collection of letters between Niedecker and Zukofsky together with a book of critical essays: "Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet". This collected edition of Niedecker's poetry is attractively put togther, includes good notes and a listing of Niedecker's published volumes, and begins with an informative introduction by Ms. Penberthy to Niedecker's life and work. The poems are arranged chronologically. The book includes Niedecker's early efforts and also includes some important prose and radio pieces, including the short work "Switchboard Girl" and a radio adaption of Faulkner's "As I lay dying." Ms. Penberthy has done a great service in making Niedecker's work available.

Much of Niedecker's early work was as a folk-poet. In 1946, she published a collection of 80 short poems called "New Goose", which was based on the rhythms of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes. These poems describe life in rural Wisconsin and show a strong sense of political activism -- in common with Zukofsky. They point to the injustices and hardships Niedecker found in war, the Depression, and a capitalist economy. A subsequent collection of early poems was titled "For Paul", named after Zukofsky's young son, and featuring meditations on music, art, and the world of nature.

Niedecker's later poetry becomes much more spare and formal. She tended to write short poems, in five lines with irregular feet. She was influenced by Haiku and by Chinese poetry aw well as by her fellow-objectivists. These poems are autobiographical, and include many scenes of life on Black Hawk Island. The longest of these poems is titled "Paean to Place". Later poems also describe the Lake Superior area around Sault Ste. Marie which Niedecker visited with her husband whom she married late in life. She also grew increasingly interested in historical themes and wrote poetry about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Adlai Stevenson, and Charles Darwin, among others. These poems integrate extensively quotations from their subjects into the text of the poems.

Niedecker's poems include irony, reflection, and a deep sense of place. They show a person who had learned to be alone with herself. Here is a short untitled poem by Niedecker (p. 157) which I hope will encourage you to read more.

"The death of my poor father

leaves debts

and two small houses.

To settle this estate

a thousand fees arise--

I enrich the law.

Before my own death is certified,

recorded, final judgement

judged

Taxes taxed

I shall own a book

of old Chinese poems

and binoculars

to probe the river

trees."

This is a collection of the works of an American poet who deserves to be read and remembered. Read more ›

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It is solid work. It is always true. May 30, 2002

By Werewolf (in a Dress)

Format:Hardcover

Let me tell you about Lorine Niedecker. She did not apologize for being born. This volume--far exceeding the much derided previous collected "From This Condensery"--represents the very best of Twentieth Century American poetry, let there be no doubt. More than just poems that echo Dickinson, Zukovsky, Williams, and who else, "Collected Works" will now surely stand as one of the cornerstones of American poetry, thanks to the hard work of editor Jenny Penberthy. The best of these poems--"Darwin" and "Paen to Place", among others--are beautiful distillations of the real. And other pieces, such as the radio plays, show great, surreal humor. Lorine from Ft. Atkinson is one the best.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Baedecker of Niedecker November 4, 2006

By C. D. Scronce

Format:Paperback

This is the definitive Niedecker. If you love poetry, you owe it to yourself to read Niedecker. Her influences run from surrealism, to Objectivism, to Haiku. Niedecker is an American original as distinctive in her way as Dickinson was in hers. We are in Jenny Penberthy's debt for bringing Niedecker's work to the attention of 21st Century readers.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars just doesn't get any more real September 4, 2008

By Raymond L. Heinrich

Format:Paperback

The other reviews here are better, but I just needed to tell you how much this book changed my view of words, writing... all that stuff. Or even more than that. After reading her poems, I went outside and things just looked different. Don't worry about what you do or don't know, these are really worth reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful minimal poetry September 15, 2012

By Philip Thorp

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Lorine Niedecker was virtually unknown in her lifetime. She died in 1970, leaving a body of work of which only a portion was published. She has been compared to Emily Dickinson because of the brevity and clarity of her poems. There are very few long ones. But there is an undercurrent of dry humour and a feeling for rhyme and assonance that is quite different to Dickinson. These poems are wonderfully compressed-every word is loaded with intent. To quote: "it took me a lifetime/to weep/a deep/trickle". She fills them with the kind of domestic detail you don't usually find in poems - cupboards, plumbing and oil stoves, as well as her proximity to nature (she lived in a cabin on a marshy island that for a long time had no running water or electricity). Most of her life's work is collected here - a life compressed, a fascinating life and personality. I didn't put it down.