Cover of the book Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet. The book is yellow with black text. In the center of the cover is a square outlined in black. Inside the square is a vase/water pitcher in white with a floral detail on it. Behind the vase are four rectangular abstract shapes in the colors green, red, blue, and black. The red shape has white dots all over it. The background of the square is yellow with white in it. The bottom left of the square is darker so it looks like a shadow.

Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet (Hardcover)

$25.00

Editor: Jenny Penberthy

Publisher: National Poetry Foundation (1996)

Lorine Niedecker lived most of her life (1903-1970) on Blackhawk Island, Wisconsin. Her poetry was formed by her early encounter with Surrealism and the Objectivist issue of Poetry magazine. In the mid-1960s she recalled for Kenneth Cox that "there was an influence from transition and from surrealistes that has always seemed to want to ride right along with the direct, hard, objective kind of writing. The subconscious and the presence of the folk, always there."

Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet addresses the ambition of Niedecker's poetry and poetics. The volume includes letters, memoirs, and essays, covering all four decades of her writing career. Among the letters, those Niedecker wrote to Mary Hoard and Harriet Monroe define her early poetics. Memoirs by Jerry Reisman, Edwin Honig, and Vivien Hone extend our understanding of her life in the 1930s and 1940s. Essays by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Nicholls, Peter Quartermain, Michael Heller, Kenneth Cox, Douglas Crase, Donald Davie, Lisa Pater Faranda, Gilbert Sorrentino, and others, provide authoritative readings of Niedecker's work.