I expect philosophy to pull me out. Do I have the strength—the sheer physical and mental strength—to develop a complete conception of things? Because in the end if I want a philosophy with no humbug in it I'll have to write it myself! (Consults his watch) Harry! I wish you'd get here—the boat must have been late. I wonder if he'll know. It's so hard to forget her life. Minny—Harry. His stories—his characters touch us as she did—their orbits come out of space and lay themselves for a short time alongside ours, then off they whirl again into the unknown. After his year in England he'll come home healthier and happier—the only one of father's children moving into something like mental equilibrium. (Alice is at the door, enters in a silent, reflective mood, stands) Eh…Alice!
ALICE
I've decided to stay.
WILLIAM
Little sister—
ALICE
It wasn't—wrong—of me to have considered—?
WILLIAM
Who can be considered educated who hasn't thought of—of ending one's life. But you'll stay here?
ALICE
Here with good mother and poor dear old good-for-nothing papa. (Brightening) While William is at hand being William and Harry is taking possession of London as Henry James, the novelist. Yes, I'll fight the Irish cause from here!
WILLIAM
That's my old Bottled Lightning speaking—(The door is softly pushed open by Harry, overcoat on arm, hat on head and holding package and valise. Alice and William throw their arms about him and relieve him of his things.)
WILLIAM
You know?
HARRY
Minny…(now disengaged from his brother and sister) It's the living who die and the writers who go on living.
ALICE
Minny's death marks the end of our youth.
Darkness
Notes and Contents Lists
NOTES
Abbreviations
CC Cid Corman
LN Lorine Niedecker
LZ Louis Zukofsky
BOOKS BY NIEDECKER
BC Blue Chicory. A posthumous collection prepared by Cid Corman. New Rochelle, N.Y.: The Elizabeth Press, 1976.
MFT My Friend Tree. Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1961.
MLBW My Life by Water: Collected Poems, 1936-1968. London: Fulcrum Press, 1970.
NC North Central. London: Fulcrum Press, 1968.
NG New Goose. Prairie City, Ill.: Press of James A. Decker, 1946.
T&G T&G: The Collected Poems (1936-1966). Penland, N.C.: The Jargon Society, 1969.
COLLECTIONS OF NIEDECKER LETTERS
BYHM “Between Your House and Mine”: The Letters of Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman, 1960 to 1970. Edited by Lisa Pater Faranda. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986.
LN: W&P Lorine Niedecker: Woman & Poet. Edited by Jenny Penberthy. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1996.
NCZ Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky, 1931-1970. Edited by Jenny Penberthy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
NIEDECKER MANUSCRIPTS
MS I use this abbreviation to refer to both her typed and holograph manuscripts.
EA “THE EARTH AND ITS ATMOSPHERE.” The 106-page typescript prepared by LN in June 1969 when Cid Corman offered to publish a book. She notes on the title page: “chosen by LN from main body of poems—to be called The Selected—”
FPOP “FOR PAUL AND OTHER POEMS.” Typescript dated December 1956.
H&SF “HARPSICHORD & SALT FISH.” Typescript prepared for publication by LN in 1970. Published posthumously by Pig Press in Durham, U.K., 1991.
“NG”MS “NEW GOOSE” typescript. Collection of short poems dated 1945.
VV “THE VERY VEERY.” The 24-page typescript prepared at the same time as “THE EARTH AND ITS ATMOSPHERE” in June 1969. LN notes on the title page: “Selected from The Selected.”
The “HARPSICHORD & SALT FISH,” “THE EARTH AND ITS ATMOSPHERE,” and “THE VERY VEERY” (H&SF, EA, VV) typescripts make up the Lorine Niedecker Collection at the Boston University Library. Cid Corman's copy of “HOMEMADE POEMS” is in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library; Jonathan Williams's copy of “HANDMADE POEMS” is part of his private collection. LN's own library plus assorted manuscripts and papers constitute the Lorine Niedecker Collection in the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. The privately held Roub Collection contains manuscripts, papers, and an extensive collection of photographs. The remainder of Niedecker's manuscripts and papers, including her posthumous bequest, is subsumed within the Louis Zukofsky Collection in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC) at the University of Texas at Austin. A typescript of Niedecker poems is included in the Edward Dahlberg Collection, also at the HRHRC at the University of Texas at Austin.
Poem
1921-1922
LN graduated from Fort Atkinson High School in June 1922 at the age of nineteen. The following two poems appeared in the school yearbook, The Tchogeerrah. She told CC that “When I was 18, I bought a Wordsworth and took the book with me down here toward evening. I didn't quite know, yet I think I was vaguely aware that the poetry current (1921) was beginning to change” (BYHM 49). In Sept. 1922, she enrolled at Beloit College and stayed until 1923 when she was summoned home to care for her ailing mother.
Reminiscence [1921]
The light of day is growing dim,
And fires, the western skies illume,
From bays and creeks, the blackbirds call,
Oh, Canadian honker, we know ‘tis fall.
On the edge of the river the muskrats build,
They're silently working while all else seems killed.
‘Tis a sign that the winter'll be long and severe—
So runs the Indian prophecy drear.
The winds blow wild; all day ‘t has blown,
And grey and sere has Nature grown.
E'en now the light is fading fast
And my longing heart turns to the days that are past.
Oh, the cozy warm room that is waiting for me
With the books all mine and the comforts so free.
Turn backward, years that are flying along,
To-night all to youth does surely belong.
Oh, why is our life not always young?
In youth, our gayest songs are sung,
We wish for life and love and fame,
We care not for serving; ourselves our thoughts claim.
I did not realize the true way to go—
Just thought the ultimate good I'd know,
Only let me feel young and willing to work
I'd not grudge the failure, nor would I shirk.
I open a book, with light turned low,
Recall the friends of long ago—
Ah, here are Ruth and Joe and Bill!
And how care-free were Mary and Phil!
Then the class page with writings, “Good luck to you!”
But our dreams have reality known too soon;
Oh, Tchogeerrah, ‘tis now that my mind you have changed,
I will work out those plans so long arranged.
Wasted Energy [1922]
Refinement of speech is a thing that we preach
All in vain it would sometimes seem,
For this is the age when slang is the rage,
And vocabularies, a dream.
I used to make rhymes; now I hand people lines
(And they're boresome and foolish, no doubt),
But however folks feel—one thing is so real—
A great many “expire and pass out.”
When Tom, Dick, and Phil are conversing,
The effect is entirely unique,
We can't quite make out what they're talking about
But we gather it's Sheba or Sheik.
I tell Tom of the quake that made Mexico shake,
“Well, ain't that the berries?” quotes he.
When describing a quail or a sunset or whale—
They're “wonderfu
l!”—each of the three.
It's amazingly queer, but from all sides we hear
Of the “crooks” and “tough birds” in our town,
Of “wild women,” of “guys,” many “I wonder why's,”
“Juicy” tales and requests to “pipe down.”
Any brains do you say? You may put them away
By this modernized method of talk.
An argument clinch? Say, “Oh, yes, that's a cinch,”
“Absolutely” is still better—less thought.
The American tongue is found lacking by some,
So they take a few words from afar.
But “Pas auf” and “trez bean” are as common, ‘twould seem,
As Uncle Joe Cannon's cigar.
1928-1936
LN married Frank Hartwig in Nov. 1928 and moved with him to Fort Atkinson where she worked as a library assistant at the Dwight Foster Public Library. She published a regular book review column, “Library Notes,” in the Jefferson County Union. In 1930, after the Depression struck, she lost her job and her marriage, and returned to Black Hawk Island to live with her parents. Reading the Objectivist issue of Poetry in Feb. 1931 led to her lifelong correspondence with LZ. He introduced her to avant-garde magazines such as Eugene Jolas's transition, which encouraged her to pursue the surrealist tendencies already visible in her writing. LN visited LZ in New York during this period, meeting Jerry Reisman, George and Mary Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, and others. LZ and Jerry Reisman visited her on Black Hawk Island in Sept. 1936.
LN excluded from her published books all writing from this period. However, the following works have survived in MS and in magazines. During this period, her experimentation in other genres was part of her larger poetic project. See “UNCLE” (in the final section of prose and radio plays).
Transition Unpublished in book form.
The Will-o-the-Wisp; a Magazine of Verse 3 (1928): 12.
Mourning Dove Unpublished in book form.
Parnassus: A Wee Magazine of Verse 2.2 (15 Nov. 1928): 4.
SPIRALS Unpublished in book form.
Promise of Brilliant Funeral Submitted on Jan. 31, 1933, and published in Poetry 42.6 (Sept. 1933): 308, as the first of a pair of poems. The second in the pair is the earlier submission, “When Ecstasy is Inconvenient.” LN rejected “SOMNAMBULISTIC JOURNEY” as an alternative title for the two poems. A letter to Harriet Monroe dated Aug. 5, 1933, revises the final line of the second stanza from “had” to “seen.”
When Ecstasy is Inconvenient Submitted on Nov. 5, 1931, and published in Poetry 42.6 (Sept. 1933): 309, paired with “Promise of Brilliant Funeral,” both under the title “SPIRALS.”
Also in Poetry Out of Wisconsin, eds. August Derleth and Raymond E.F. Larsson (New York: Henry Harrison, 1937) 198.
PROGRESSION Unpublished.
An earlier shorter version, now lost, went to Poetry on Jan. 31, 1933. The accompanying letter to Harriet Monroe notes that the poem “was written six months before Mr. Zukofsky referred me to the surrealists for correlation.” She explains that “poetry to have greatest reason for existing must be illogical. An idea, a rumination such as more or less constantly roams the mind, meets external object or situation with quite illogical association. Memory, if made up of objects at all, retains those objects which were at the time of first perception and still are the most strikingly unrecognizable. In my own experience sentences have appeared full-blown in the first moments of waking from sleep. It is a system of thought replacements, the most remote the most significant or irrational; a thousand variations of the basic tension; an attempt at not hard clear images but absorption of these. Intelligibility or readers' recognition of sincerity and force lies in a sense of basic color, sound, rhythm” (LN:W&P 177-78).
The present text is a later version of the poem sent to Ezra Pound on Jan. 6, 1934, and unknown until 1995 when it was found by Burton Hatlen in the Ezra Pound Papers at the Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Canvass; For exhibition; Tea Unpublished in book form.
Submitted unsuccessfully to Poetry on Feb. 12, 1934. See next note.
Beyond what; I heard; Memorial Day Unpublished in book form.
Submitted unsuccessfully to Poetry on May 31, 1934.
All six poems, which LN described as “experiments] in planes of consciousness,” were published in Bozart-Westminster (Spring/Summer 1935): 26-27. Her intention was for each group of three poems to be printed side by side on a double-page spread. In a Feb. 12, 1934, letter to Harriet Monroe, she refers to the “Canvass” trilogy as “[a]n experiment in three planes: left row is deep subconscious, middle row beginning of monologue, and right row surface consciousness, social banal; experiment in vertical simultaneity (symphonic rather than traditional long line melodic form), and the whole written with the idea of readers finding sequence for themselves, finding their own meaning whatever that may be, as spectators before abstract painting. Left vertical row honest recording of constrictions appearing before falling off to sleep at night. I should like a poem to be seen as well as read. Colors and textures of certain words appearing simultaneously with the sound of words and printed directly above or below each other. All this means break-up of sentence which I deplore though I try to retain the great conceit of capitals and periods, of something to say. It means that for me at least, certain words of a sentence—prepositions, connectives, pronouns—belong up toward full consciousness, while strange and unused words appear only in subconscious. (It also means that for me at least this procedure is directly opposite to that of the consistent and prolonged dream—in dream the simple and familiar words like prepositions, connectives, etc…are not absent, in fact, noticeably present to show illogical absurdity, discontinuity, parody of sanity)” (LN:W&P 181-82).
Stage Directions Unpublished in book form.
MS dated Aug. 1934.
Bozart-Westminster (Spring/Summer 1935): 27.
Synamism Unpublished.
Undated MS on which LN notes: “Finish of Sub-entries at least for the present. Stage Directions is the ‘theatre’?” “Stage Directions” and “Synamism” may well have been parts of a larger work called “SUB-ENTRIES.”
Will You Write Me a Christmas Poem? Unpublished.
The otherwise undated MS bears the following note: “Reworking of poem by Lorine Niedecker, L.Z.—Xmas 1934.” LZ's revisions to the MS:
stanza 3, line 2: in the damp development of winter
stanza 9, line 4: And where are we?
stanza 11, line 5 is deleted.
stanza 12, line 1: The Christian cacophony
The present text does not reflect LZ's “re-working.”
NEXT YEAR OR I FLY MY ROUNDS TEMPESTUOUS Unpublished.
Dated by LZ “Xmas 1934” (found by the editor in the LZ Collection, HRHRC, Austin, Texas in 1996). Handwritten on small pieces of paper pasted over the printed text of a bi-weekly calendar, 27 sheets long; each sheet is 5½ × 43/8 inches. The calendar's original text is only just legible bearing platitudes such as “True bravery is/shown by performing/without witness what/ one might be capable/ of doing before all the/world” (Jan. 13-26).
DOMESTIC AND UNAVOIDABLE Unpublished in book form.
Undated MS.
Published—with minor revisions to the stage or camera directions—in Bozart-Westminster (Spring/Summer 1935): 27-28. These revisions may have been made by Jerry Reisman. Early in 1935, LZ had sent Pound a copy of Reisman's short scenario of LN's “DOMESTIC AND UNAVOIDABLE.” Many years later, Reisman recalled, “Actually I did nothing to LN's play. I simply added instructions for a cameraman. Lorine's plays struck me as being conceived for the screen rather than the stage” (letter to editor, April 5, 1989).
The present text is drawn from Bozart-Westminster.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOLDING COMPANY and FANCY ANOTHER DAY GONE
Unpublished in book form.
Published together and titled “TWO POEMS” in New Democracy (May 1936): 60-62, in a section called “New
Directions” edited by James Laughlin.
Published together in New Directions 1 (1936): n.p.
No MSS or printer's typescripts survive. In both appearances of “FANCY…” the first two speakers are “HE“. I take this to be a printing error and change the first speaker to “SHE”.
News Unpublished.
Undated MS. Speculatively dated early 1936: lines 64-65 “over and down Payroll Hill/fashions mornings after” are adapted in “My coat threadbare” (see p. 95) published in 1936.
MS annotations are addressed to Zukofsky: “I first had as first line Your wit, the lover said. Maybe To Wit: shd be title and leave out the lover said since I'm no longer in depression [] (Zu)” And referring to the last line or lines, she says, “might leave out but (…) feeling of wings, wingjabs.”
1936-1945
This is the period of LN's folk project. Of the total 88 folk poems, 70 were grouped in two collections—41 in the published volume New Goose (Prairie City, Ill.: The Press of James A. Decker, 1946) and 29 in the unpublished manuscript also titled “NEW GOOSE.” The two collections are preceded here by 16 uncollected poems which appeared in two earlier overlapping sequences: a 13-poem undated “MOTHER GOOSE” MS, very likely one that LN submitted unsuccessfully to Poetry on Feb. 25, 1936, and a 17-poem “MOTHER GEESE” selection published in New Directions 1 (1936): n.p.
These 16 poems do not yet register the local speech habits or the local history that enter her work once she starts research for the WPA's Wisconsin state guide in 1938.
O let's glee glow as we go Unpublished in book form.
In the 13-poem “MOTHER GOOSE” MS probably sent to Poetry on Feb. 25, 1936.
In the 17-poem group, “MOTHER GEESE,” New Directions 1 (1936): n.p.
Troubles to win Unpublished in book form.
In the 13-poem “MOTHER GOOSE” MS probably sent to Poetry on Feb. 25, 1936.
A country's economics sick Unpublished in book form.
Collecte Works Page 19