MERGANSERS

Mergansers
       fans

             on their heads

Thoughts on things
      fold unfold
             above the river beds

Poem by: Lorine Niedecker (1967)

I ROSE

I rose from marsh mud
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch
the stain secret collects.
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.

 -- Lorine Niedecker, 1948

DON'T PLANT WHEAT (UNPUBLISHED FROM NEW GOOSE -- LORINE NIEDECKER)

The government men said Don't plant wheat,
we've got too much, just keep out weeds.

Our crop comes up thru change of season
to be stored for what good reason

way off and here we need it -- Eat
who can, who can't -- Don't grow wheat

or corn but quack-grass-bread!
Such things they plant around my head.

Quackgrass

Description:

Aliases: couch grass, dog grass, twitch grass, wheat grass, cough grass, cutch, quitch grass, quake grass, scutch grass, chandler's grass, durfa grass, durfee grass, Dutch grass, Fin's grass, Scotch quelch, devil's grass, witch grass.

Agropyron repens (Beauv.), Triticum repens (Linn.)

Family: N.O. Graminaceae

Distribution: everywhere

Charges: Pernicious and troublesome behaviour, garden terrorism

Prosecution:


"One of the worst pests with which the farmer has to contend, taking possession of cultivated ground and crowding out valuable crops." -- "The Herb Hunters Guide" by A.F. Sievers, 1930.


Defense:

"Though commonly regarded in this country (UK) as a worthless and troublesome weed, its roots are, however, considered on the Continent to be wholesome food for cattle and horses. In Italy, especially, they are carefully gathered by the peasants and sold in the markets. The roots have a sweet taste, somewhat resembling liquorice, and Withering relates that, dried and ground into meal, bread has been made with them in time of scarcity." -- "A Modern Herbal" by Mrs. M. Grieve, 1931.


"Although a gardener be of another opinion, yet a physician holds half an acre of them to be worth five acres of carrots twice told over." -- "Culpeper -- The Complete Herbal" by Nicholas Culpeper, 1653.

Audobon (from New Goose) -- Lorine Niedecker

Tried selling my pictures.  In jail
twice for debt.  My companion
a sharp, frosty gale.


            In England, unpacked
them with fear:
must I migrate back
to the woods unknown, strange
to all but the birds
I paint?


Dear Lucy, the servants here
move quiet
as kildeer.

The Influence Of Inference

You see here
the influence
of inference

Moon on rippled
Stream

“Except as
and unless”

 

Lorine Niedecker:  From group of eleven poems entitled “HEAR AND SEE” (October 1967).

Upper: Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marine, 1890.

Lower, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Moonlight Marine, 1908.

City Talk (Excerpt) -- Lorine Niedecker

II.

I’m good for people?—

penetrating?—if you mean

I’m rotting here—

I’m an alewife

the fish the seagull

has no taste for

I die along the shore

and send a bad smell in

As praiseworthy

The power of breathing (Epictetus)

while we sleep.  Add:

to move the parts of the body

without sound

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.