Durham E-Theses and silence : Lorine Niedecker and the life of poetry. Jowett, Lorna Elizabeth How to cite: Jowett, Lorna Elizabeth (1994) and silence : Lorine Niedecker and the life of poetry., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1026/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk "and silence": Lorine Niedecker and the Life of Poetry. Lorna Elizabeth Jowett A thesis submitted in candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Durham Department of English Studies 1994 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. U,y 6 JUN1995 "and silence" : Lorine Niedecker and the Life of Poetry. LORNA ELIZABETH JOWETT Thesis Abstract. Ph. D. (University of Durham) 1994. (1903 This thesis is a study of the work of the American poet Lorine Niedecker - 1970). Since Niedecker has been so neglected by critics and students of American poetry, one of the aims of the thesis has been to determine her affinities, and to place her in relation to certain poetic traditions, for example, the Modernism of Pound or Williams, or the Objectivism of Louis Zukofsky. Firstly, I examine some of the choices Niedecker made as a practising poet, and suggest that these have affected not only the writing of her poetry but also its reception, especially with regard to her gender and marginality. The second part of the thesis looks at how Niedecker has been misrepresented by critics and editors who have concentrated on certain themes and subjects in her work, ignoring others. Thus the prevalent image of Niedecker as a poet of place or locality and of nature is challenged and more subversive work on war, politics, and women, is recovered for discussion. Finally I argue that silence is an integral part of Niedecker's poetics, with specific investigation of condensation, the unspoken, sound, and the use of space in poetic form. Again, critics have misrepresented Niedecker's poetics, and it has seldom been recognized that her poetics often continue and further previous poetic practice, as well as being innovative and at times subversive. This thesis aims to demonstrate not only how Niedecker relates to the poetic canon, but also that by the very nature of her poetic practice and her identity as a (woman) poet, Niedecker challenges that canon and the criteria which exclude her from it. CONTENTS. Declaration i ................................................................................................................. Acknowledgements ii ................................................................................................... Introduction 1 ............................................................................................................... Publishing Chronology 5 ............................................................................................... I. "Kept mum": Silences in Niedecker's poetic life 1. Niedecker's for "Poetry first" 6 choices poetry: comes ............................................. II. "Light and silence": Niedecker's critical reception 2. Place: "I from 23 rose marsh mud" ........................................................................ 3. Nature and Environment: "every living thing ...................................................... 40 4. Global "world disillusionment" 57 politics: ............................................................. 5. Women: "these in days" 75 closed ......................................................................... III "Such a thing as silence": Silence as an integral part of Niedecker's poetics 6. Condensing: "cut it just 93 and write poetry" .......................................................... 7. The Unspoken: "secret 112 notes" ......................................................................... 8. Form: "a proper/ balance/ of water, air/ and poetry"......................................... 128 9. Sound: "you in 145 sound your poem silence"........................................................ Conclusion 164 ............................................................................................................. Notes 168 ..................................................................................................................... Works Cited 175 ........................................................................................................... Appendix: Works Consulted 183 ................................................................................ DECLARATION. This thesis is the original work of the author except where acknowledged by reference, and no part of the thesis has been previously submitted for a degree in this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without prior written consent, and information derived from it should be acknowledged. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I wish to acknowledge the help of those libraries holding Niedecker manuscript material which I visited in the course of my research for this project: the Mugar Memorial Library at the University of Boston; the Poetry/Rare Books Collection at S. U. N. Y., Buffalo; the Louis Zukofsky Collection in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; and the Dwight Foster Public Library, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. To Gail and Bonnie Roub, Mary Gates, Marilla Fuge and all who helped me during my short time at Fort Atkinson, I offer warm thanks, particularly for their boundless and infectious enthusiasm. Thanks are also due to Phyllis Walsh, who made a special trip to Fort Atkinson, her former home town, to meet me and discuss Niedecker's life and work. I must also thank Cid Corman, Niedecker's literary executor, for his permission to use unpublished letters and other manuscript material, and for his encouragement to all Niedecker scholars. Help was at hand nearer home and I would like to acknowledge and personally thank Ric Caddel for sharing with me his store of Niedecker knowledge and contacts, and Harriet Tarlo for her enthusiasm as a Niedecker reader and critic. To my supervisor, Dr. Diana Collecott, without whom this project would never have been begun, I offer special thanks for her invaluable encouragement, advice, direction and help. A grant from the Scottish Education Department is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, I owe an enormous personal debt of thanks to my husband, Gavin Walker - for everything. INTRODUCTION. Lorin Niedecker almost always needs some introduction. Niedecker was born in 1903, five collections of her work were published during her lifetime, and her death in 1970 caused hardly a ripple in literary circles. Although several publications of her poetry emerged after her death (seePublishing Chronology on page 5), only one remains in print. Niedecker is considered to be a very minor poet. She is obscure. She rarely appears in anthologies. If she is associated with a poetic movement, then it is with the Objectivist group, who are almost equally unknown. One critic describesNiedecker as "a poet whose work continues to be muffled by her categorization as a minor 'objectivist' " (Nichols, 28) and certainly in criticism her name is most often mentioned in connection with the Objectivists, more specifically with Louis Zukofsky. If Niedecker is only to be seen as ancillary to Zukofsky, her situation is desperate, for Zukofsky and the Objectivists are themselves on the margins of the poetic canon, despite their influence on later generations of poets. Discussing Niedecker and the Objectivists is difficult, not least because of the difficulties in talking of an Objectivist "group" or "school"; more recent criticism is moving toward less well-defined terms like "nexus". This is not to say that the Objectivist poets did not have common aims and methods for poetry, and indeed as their careers progressed, these similarities became more obvious, yet as one recent study notes "theirs was an amorphous movement, for they had neither programme nor agenda" (Quartermain, 2). In fact, the "movement" began when George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff and Zukofsky started meeting at the house of William Carlos Williams. Niedecker later spoke of herself as "on the periphery" of Objectivism (Letter to Corman, 28 May 1969, Between, 193), and once described its impact on her: "the first flush of the launching of the 'Objectivist' movement was over but not long after the Feb '31 issue of Poetry (Chicago) had come out and I saw it and knew here was the centre of literature in this country and in the world" (Letter to Cox, 11 Jun. 1969, "Extracts, " 37). This Objectivist issue of Poetry inspired her to write to its editor, Zukofsky, thus launching the most important and influential literary