Read-y.

I keep a book list. This will come as no surprise to those who know me well, given my obsession over reading and my devotion to record-keeping. I try to finish one book per week - I know, my numbers aren't that high, but it takes longer than 7 days to absorb something like Adorno's Aesthetic Theory or Elizabeth Johnson's She Who Is or even Roberto Bolaño's 2666.

I just finished reading a book I've been wanting to read for years:

Elizabeth Willis has put together a fine collection of critical essays on Lorine Niedecker and her "Poetics of Place," one well worth reading even for those new to Niedecker.

Niedecker has long been one of my go-to poets, her words among those worth always having around. Straightforward, double-edged, simple, trapdoored, vernacular, philosophical, delightful - and satisfying and even fun for the reader.

Niedecker lived marginalized, engaging both the poetic elite and the common folk.

 I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.
...
What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

She often toiled in poverty, but the richness of her language does not leave an afterimage of austerity.

I was the solitary plover
A pencil for a wing-bone

I am intrigued by concept of this woman who saw the writer's life and went for it, although that meant working hard toward a vision that was not always understood or supported by those who filled her everyday.

(A few years ago I read an autobiography by Paul Auster, and he began by saying something along the lines of "Everybody has to earn a living, so I'm going to explain how I did that and still managed to write." Even though I enjoy my day job, I struggle with the feeling that I don't have enough hours in the day for the things I really want to be doing. Hence the return to graduate school: more than anything, I'm buying time to read, and write, and study.)

Poet's Work

Grandfather
  advised me:
        Learn a trade

 I learned
  to sit at desk
        and condense

 No layoff
  from this
        condensery

Niedecker's work also has this charming quality that comes from her keen attentiveness to the world as it is around her, that comes from her serious playfulness. She is punny and direct, writing layers upon layers in words that read like a child's nursery rhyme. She cares about this world, is connected to it, and it deeply matters to her.

My life is hung up
in the flood
   a wave-blurred
              portrait

Don't fall in love
with this face--
   it no longer exists
               in water
                       we cannot fish