Collecte Works (47 page)

Sound of wagon creaking and mules.

DARL
as narrator

Kind of nice, the mud whispering on the wheels. And Jewel's horse moving with a light, high-kneed driving gait just back of us.

CASH

It'll be smelling in a couple of days now.

ANSE

It's a hard country on a man; it's hard. Eight miles of the sweat of the body washed up outen the Lord's earth, where the Lord himself told him to put it. Nowhere in this sinful world can a honest hard-working man profit. And the towns live off them that sweats. It's only in heaven every man will be equal and it will be taken from them that have and given to them that have not by the Lord.

CHANT OF MEN'S VOICES WHISPERING

Nowhere in this sinful world can a honest hard-working man profit.

Nowhere in this sinful world…

VARDAMAN

There's the river, Pa, there's the river. See?

ANSE

We're getting to Samson's at dusk-dark. How's the bridge?

DARL

Washout out, just like Tull's. No, just under in the middle, out at both ends but swaying back and forth like a grass carpet.

ANSE

We'll stay at Samson's for the night and if it don't rain cross over in the morning.

SAMSON

Howdy, folks. Unhitch your mules, Anse, and come in to supper.

ANSE

We'll stay in the barn, thank yuh, we've got something in the basket.

SAMSON'S WIFE

Look here, come on in to supper and then go to sleep in a bed. You've got to get your rest. I believe in respect for the dead but you need your sleep.

ANSE

No thank yuh, ma'm, I wouldn't be beholden.

SAMSON

The best respect you can pay her now is to get her in the ground the quickest you can. You better give up going to Jefferson, Anse, and go over here to New Hope, only three miles, bury her there.

DEWEY DELL
(with great urgency)

Pa, you promised, you gotta take her to Jefferson—if you don't do it, it will be a curse on you. You promised, you've got to.

ANSE

Did I say no?

SAMSON
(lowers his voice as if to himself)

Stubborn, the lot of em. Those bone-gaunted mules of theirn…and that girl watching me. If her eyes had a been pistols I wouldn't be talking now.
(Raises his voice to speak directly to them)
Well, come in later on to sleep just as my wife said.

ANSE

I thank yuh but I'll stay up with her. I don't begrudge her it.

DEWEY DELL
(to herself)

I took the knife from the steaming fish and killed Darl. Darl's eyes. Because he knows.

ANSE
(to himself)

Now I can get them teeth. That will be a comfort, it will.

DARL

Look up in the sky.

VARDAMAN

Buzzard.

Silence.

Sound of rooster crowing. Noises of dawn. Sound of wagon creaking along.

DARL

Yes, the bridge submerged in the middle. Sagging and swaying.

Sound of wagon creaking gives over to water swirling.

CASH

Well—a fellow could walk across yonder on the planks and logs that have caught up on the ford past the jam—showing nothing under em though—might be quicksand built up there. What you think, Darl?

DARL

Let Pa, Dewey Dell and Vardaman walk across on the bridge, the water won't be too high for that. And then we'll go in the wagon over the ford best we can.

PEABODY
as narrator

Sure, there they were, ready to go through the water. That girl, too, with the lunch basket on one arm and that package under the other. Just going to town. Bent on it. They would risk the fire and the earth and the water and all just to eat a sack of bananas.

DARL

Jewel—

JEWEL

I'll go ahead on the horse. You can follow me in the wagon.

DARL

Right. And Jewel, take the end of the rope upstream and brace it. Will you do that, Jewel?

JEWEL

I don't give a damn.
(Voice in high tension above increasing sound of water swirling and logs jamming):
Just so we do something. Sitting here, not lifting a goddam hand…

DARL
(above the noise)

The motion of the wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice. Doc Peabody, would you have gone over?

PEABODY
as narrator

An irrevocable quality. I can see it—the mules stand, their forequarters already sloped a little, their rumps high.

Sound of mules breathing with a deep groaning sound.

DARL

Jewel's horse is sinking. No, there he is again. Cash, steady the coffin. Wait—here comes a log! Cash! We're gone!

PEABODY
as narrator

I know just how it was—a log surged up out of the water and stood for an instant upright upon that surging and heaving desolation like Christ.

CASH
(
yelling
)

Darl, get out.
(Frantically):
Look out! Jump!

Sound of crash and destruction and animal cries. Then dead silence.

PEABODY
as narrator

The wagon, the box with the dead, Darl, Jewel, Cash's carpenter tools, Cash himself, did you think they wouldn't get out of it? Cash had a broken leg but he claimed it bothered him none. They hitched up somebody's team, laid Cash on top of Addie and here they go again.

Sound of wagon creaking along and perhaps sounds of life along the road—car passes sounding its horn, etc….

DEWEY DELL

Pa, I gotta stop.

ANSE

Can't you wait till we get to town—we aint got time if we want to get there by dark and get the hole dug.

DEWEY DELL

No, I gotta go in the bushes. I won't be long.

Sound of wagon ceases.

JEWEL

Taint nothing to dig a hole. Who the hell can't dig a hole.

DARL

I'll bet Dewey Dell changes clothes. Sure, there she is already. Sunday dress, beads and shoes and stockings.

ANSE
(long suffering)

I thought I told her to leave them clothes to home.

DARL
(to himself)

I wonder what she'll accomplish in town.

Sound of creaking of wagon fades out and city street noises fade in. Sound of footsteps and a screen door opening and closing. A small bell sound as of door or ringing of cash register.

MALE VOICE,
drug store clerk

Yes ma'm?
Silence.

DRUG CLERK

Yes, ma'm?

DEWEY DELL

I want something, suh…can we talk private…

DRUG CLERK

What is your trouble?

DEWEY DELL

Well—female trouble, suh. I've got ten dollars. Lafe said I could get it at a drug store.

DRUG CLERK

But ma'm, you've come to the wrong place—

DEWEY DELL

This is a drug store, aint it? We'll never tell you sold it to us, never, suh.

DRUG CLERK

Listen, you go on home, buy yourself a marriage license with that ten dollars.

DEWEY DELL
(
pleading
)

If you've got something, let me have it.

DRUG CLERK
(to himself
)

It's a hard life they have, sometimes a man…
(Raises his voice and speaks directly to her):
Look here, the Lord gave you what you have even if He did use the devil to do it.
(Lowered voice again as if to himself
): Funny looking set, that's her family out there on the street I guess, in the wagon. I heard somebody say they were running around getting cement—
cement—
for the boy's broken leg. And the wagon smells as though there was something dead in it. They'll all hole up in jail the lot of em. This girl's not bad looking, though—I might as well play along with her.
(Normal voice again but with a reckless, philandering quality):
Well, here's something then—

DEWEY DELL

It smells like turpentine. You sho this will work? Is this all there's to it?

DRUG CLERK

I tell you what you do. You come back at ten o'clock tonight, I'll give you the rest of it.

Silence. Then montage of voices, each as if talking to himself.

VARDAMAN

Hurry up, Dewey Dell. Hit smells.

DARL

How does your leg feel, Cash?

CASH

Fine. The stuff is cool on it.

VARDAMAN

Jewel hasn't got a horse anymore.

ANSE

I wouldn't be beholden.

CASH

It don't bother me none.

DEWEY DELL

I just know it won't work. I just know it won't.

VARDAMAN

We can sleep on the straw tonight with our legs in the moon. Jefferson is no longer a far place.

CASH

Ah—go easy. For the sake of Christ.

Now they speak directly to each other.

PEABODY

Go easy!
(Snorts)
Raw cement! Don't you lie there, Cash and try to tell me you rode six days on a wagon without springs with a broken leg and it never bothered you.

CASH

It never bothered me much.

PEABODY

Raw cement! You mean it never bothered Anse much. Don't tell me. And don't tell me it aint going to bother you to have to limp around on one short leg for the balance of your life—if you walk at all again. God Amighty, why didn't Anse carry you to the nearest sawmill and stick your leg in the saw? That would have cured it. Then you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family…Well, now you've got her in the ground, where is Anse, anyhow, what's he up to now?

CASH

He's taking back them spades he borrowed.

PEABODY

Of course he'd have to borrow a spade to bury his wife with. Unless he could borrow a hole in the ground. Too bad you all didn't put him in it too…

DARL

Here comes Pa now.

VARDAMAN

Who's she coming with him? Who's she?

CASH

Looks like the woman he borrowed the spades of.

Sounds of footsteps fading in.

ANSE

Young uns, meet Mrs. Bundren.

PEABODY
as narrator

And damned if he didn't have teeth too.

from
  
TASTE AND TENDERNESS

a two-act play about the Jameses

    
ACT I, SCENE
3

    
William's room. He is now 30, Alice is 24.

                      
WILLIAM
(writing in his journal at table)

She's gone. A part of myself was lowered into the grave with her today. Minny—Minny Temple is dead.
(Rises with gesture of futility)
Death or life—it's all one meaning. What about that part of me left here to fight through this nothingness—the nothingness of this egotistical fury! William James, what about it? All the years of study—introspection—give it all up! Restrict myself to anatomy. What then?—count vertebrae for the rest of my life? I read Biblical texts to console myself these days.

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

Abbreviations

BOOKS BY NIEDECKER

COLLECTIONS OF NIEDECKER LETTERS

NIEDECKER MANUSCRIPTS

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 “wonderful!”—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?