Poet Portraits: Lorine Niedecker -

Lorine Niedecker, photo from Jacket Magazine

One of my favorite poets, yet probably one who is least known, Lorine Niedecker.

If you want to learn more about her, I recommend these two books: Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works and America's Greatest Unknown Poet: Lorine Niedecker Reminiscences, Photographs, Letters and Her Most Memorable Poems.  (Also, click on the link to Jacket Magazine under her photo as they have good introduction to her.)

She writes a lot of shorter poems and she wrote a series of poems written on a small daily calendar, yes, she may have been the first to do a poem-a-day--

Here are a few of her poems --

[Popcorn-can cover]

Popcorn-can cover

screwed to the wall

over a hole

      so the cold

can’t mouse in   

~

[Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths?]

Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths?

Fourteen washrags, Ed Van Ess?

Must be going to give em

to the church, I guess.

He drinks, you know. The day we moved

he came into the kitchen stewed,

mixed things up for my sister Grace—

put the spices in the wrong place.

~

The last 2 stanzas of "[In the great snowfall before the bomb]"--

But what vitality! The women hold jobs--
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.


What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?