MY HOMAGE TO LORINE NIEDECKER

I’m pleased to report that my poem “In the Condensery,” which I’m reproducing for you below, has been published in the winter 2021 issue of The Solitary Plover. The journal, and the website lorineniedecker.org, aims to share information and poetry and to “provide researchers with a starting place for their research” about Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), a poet whose concise yet densely musical verse has provided me with a great deal of pleasure recently. 

My poem takes off from Niedecker’s well-known 9-line ars poetica, “Poet’s work,” in which she envisions a kind of poetry factory where the main work involves condensation of poems. In turn, my poem condenses an early stage of Niedecker’s life history.   

David M. Katz

In the Condensery

Lorine Neidecker wrote about water,

How it buckled the wooden floor

Of their cottage in Wisconsin--

On Blackhawk Island, to be 

Precise, as she was, her father

A carp fisherman, her mother going

Deaf, presumably inattentive,

Providing the girl with many

Silent hours to condense the 

Things she saw into “milk,”

“Fish,” broad generic words

Which could suffice for the

Watery green of her girlhood,

No names necessary. As she grew

She saw her trade as working

In a “condensery,” which was

Her word for where she would

Silently boil and sweeten

Her given pint of language

And condense her father’s catch.