Gratitude

Dear Stacey Levine

A thank you to the writer who introduced me to the poetry of Lorine Niedecker

Thank you for writing about Lorine Niedecker’s Collected Works back in 2003.

Back when I read your review in crinkly newsprint the week it appeared in The Stranger, I went and bought the book. I wanted to know more about this poet who compared herself to a solitary bird and whose language you compared to the simple necessity of twigs.

Thank you for talking about a poet nobody mentioned when I went to high school or college, not even in grad school when I was studying poetry.

Thank you for mentioning the connections and disconnections between Niedecker and Emily Dickinson because this hooked me.

Who was this poet who avoided fame while Dickinson dreamed of it?

Thank you for writing about outsiders and people who mostly live in obscurity.

As I learned more about Niedecker, I found out that she’d worked in a public library. Guess where I worked in 2003?

I submitted an “item not in catalog” request to get the collections librarian from my library to buy her book, so other people would discover her, too.

Thank you for the reminder that there was a place for me in poetry if I wanted to write tiny poems about my neighbors and home.

The famous professor on the faculty where I went to grad school had looked at my poems and said, if this was what I wanted to write about, he didn’t know how to help me. Thank you for reminding me that there is help for me.

Lorine Niedecker has become more well-known in the almost twenty years since her Collected Works appeared. It is thanks to its publication and the work of the book’s editor, Jenny Penberthy.

Another factor has been the Friends of Lorine Niedecker. It is a group based in Wisconsin where Niedecker lived; among other activities, they publish a newsletter and host a writers conference.

Their website has a lot of information about Niedecker and many examples of her poems.