Collecte Works
Authors: 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
Will You Write Me a Christmas Poem?
NEXT YEAR OR I FLY MY ROUNDS TEMPESTUOUS
THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOLDING COMPANY
There was a bridge once that said I'm going
Ash woods, willow, close to shore,
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,
Here it gives the laws for fishing thru the ice—
On Columbus Day he set out for the north
We know him—Law and Order League—
I said to my head, Write something.
Grampa's got his old age pension,
I doubt I'll get silk stockings out
To see the man who took care of our stock
Gen. Rodimstev's story/(Stalingrad)
Asa Gray wrote Increase Lapham:
Well, spring overflows the land,
What a woman!—hooks men like rugs,
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
Old Hamilton hailed the man from the grocery store:
A working man appeared in the street
Look, the woods, the sky, our home.
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
The government men said Don't plant wheat,
On a row of cabins/next my home
When brown folk lived a distance
Nearly landless and on the way to water
Understand me, dead is nothing
How bright you'll find young people,
The young ones go away to school
In the great snowfall before the bomb
Not all that's heard is music. We leave
Tell me a story about the war.
Your father to me in your eighth summer:
To Paul now old enough to read:
Jesse James and his brother Frank
May you have lumps in your mashed potatoes
Old Mother turns blue and from us,
Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt?
You know, he said, they used to make
In Europe they grow a new bean while here
I am sick with the Time's buying sickness.
To Aeneas who closed his piano
My friend the black and white collie
We physicians watch the juices rise
European Travel/(Nazi New Order)
Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance
Don't tell me property is sacred!
February almost March bites the cold.
Some float off on chocolate bars
The park/“a darling walk/for the mind”
My mother saw the green tree toad
Young in Fall I said: the birds
In every part of every living thing
Iron the common element of earth
And at the blue ice superior spot
Schoolcraft left the Soo—canoes
