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Collecte Works

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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,

Jesse 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

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