National Poetry Month: Lorine Niedecker

Untitled

(Lorine Niedecker)

In the great snowfall before the bomb

colored yule tree lights

windows, the only glow for contemplation

along this road

I worked the print shop

right down among em

the folk from whom all poetry flows

and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie

I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists

down by Larry the Lug,

I'd never get anywhere

because I'd never had suction,

pull, you know, favor, drag,

well-oiled protection.

LORINE NIEDECKER (1903-1970) worked in Madison, Wisconsin in the Federal Writers Project, researching state biographies and writing for radio station WHA. In 1931 she read the February issue of Poetry, guest-edited by the New York poet Louis Zukofsky, who argued for Objectivism in poetry -- focusing on an object rather than one's feelings and conveying its essence along a musical line. Lorine wrote Zukofsky; after corresponding two years, she went to New York to meet him. They became lovers, and they remained intellectual friends for decades, stimulating and critiquing each other's poetry, sharing inside jokes, and venting against the establishment. Though she was published frequently in literary magazines, Lorine saw only four books of poetry published in her lifetime: New Goose, My Friend Tree, North Central, and T & G: Collected Poems, which was published by Jonathan Williams's Jargon Press in 1969.