City Talk (Excerpt) -- Lorine Niedecker

II.

I’m good forpeople?—

penetrating?—ifyou mean

I’m rottinghere—

I’m analewife

the fish theseagull

has no tastefor

I die alongthe shore

and send abad smell in

Aspraiseworthy

The power ofbreathing (Epictetus)

while we sleep.  Add:

to move theparts of the body

withoutsound

and to float 

on a smooth green stream

in a silent boat

Plover

I was the solitary plover

a pencil

        for a wing-bone

From the secret notes

I must tilt

upon the pressure

execute and adjust

      In us sea-air rhythm

"We live by the urgent wave

of the verse"

Lorine Niedecker, From Paean to Place (!968), included in Collected Works (ed. Jenny Penberthy), Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002

Linnaeus in Lapland (1957) -- Lorine Niedecker

Nothing worth noting

except and Andromeda

with quadrangular shoots--

              the boots

of the people

wet inside:  they must swim

to church thru the floods

or be taxed--the blossoms

             from the bosoms

of the leaves

J.F. Kennedy After the Bay of Pigs (Lorine Niedecker, 1967)

To stand up

black-marked tulip

not snapped by the storm

"I've been duped by the experts"

--and walk

the South Lawn

Mergansers (Poem)

Mergansers

       fans

             on their heads

Thoughts on things

      fold unfold

             above the river beds

Poem by: Lorine Niedecker (1967)

When Ecstasy Is Inconvenient (Lorine Niedecker,1931)

Feign a great calm;

all gay transport soon ends.

Chant: who knows--

flight's end or flight's beginning

for the resting gull?

Heart, be still.

Say there is money but it rusted;

say the time of moon is not right for escape.

It's the color of the lower sky

too broadly suffused

or the wind in my tie.

Know amazedly how

often one takes his madness

into his own hands 

and keeps it.

T.E. Lawrence by Lorine Niedecker

T.E. Lawrence

How impossible it is

to be alone

the one thing humanity

    has never really

moved towards

From Lorine Niedecker, Collected Works (ed. Jenny Penberthy), Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002