LORINE'S TOOLBOX - EXHIBITS

"EXHIBITS" FROM LORINE NIEDECKER'S POETRY
TO ACCOMPANY THE ESSAY "LORINE'S TOOLBOX"
from Collected Works ed. by Jenny Penberthy, University of California Press.

EXHIBIT 1 (p. 194):

Grandfather
     advised me:
          Learn a trade

I learned
     to sit at desk
          and condense

No layoff
     from this
          condensery

-----

EXHIBIT 2 (p. 247):

Where the arrows
     of the road signs
          lead us:

Life is natural
     in the evolution
          of matter

Nothing supra-rock
     about it
          simply

butterflies
     are quicker
          than rock

-----

EXHIBIT 3 (p. 233):

Through all this granite land
the sign of the cross

Beauty: impurities in the rock

-----

EXHIBIT 4 (pp. 261-262):

Fish
       fowl
              flood
       Water lily mud
My life

in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
                          born
in swale and swamp and sworn
to water

My father
through marsh fog
      sculled down
             from high ground
saw her face

at the organ
bore the weight of lake water
       and the cold –
he seined for carp to be sold
that their daughter

might go high
on land
       to learn
Saw his wife turn
deaf

and away
She
      who knew boats
             and ropes
no longer played

-----

EXHIBIT 5 (p. 114):

My daughters left home
I was job-certified
to rake leaves
                             in New Madrid.

Now they tell me my girls
should support me again
and they're not out of debt
              from the last time they did.

-----

EXHIBIT 6 (p. 228):

I married

in the world's black night
for warmth
           if not repose.
           At the close –

someone.

-----

EXHIBIT 7 (p. 236):

The smooth black stone
I picked up in true source park
       the leaf beside it
once was stone

Why should we hurry
       Home

-----

EXHIBIT 8 (p. 196):

Our talk, our books
riled the shore like bullheads
at the roots of the luscious
large water lily

Then we entered the lily
built white on a red carpet

the circular quiet
cool bar

glass stems to caress
We stayed till the stamens trembled

-----

EXHIBIT 9 (p. 194):

Get a load
     of April's
          fabulous

frog rattle –
     lowland freight cars
          in the night

-----

EXHIBIT 10 (p. 205):

Return
the night women's
gravy

to the cleaned
stove

-----

EXHIBIT 11 (p. 283):

You are the man
You are my other country
and I find it hard going

You are the prickly pear
You are the sudden violent storm

the torrent to raise the river
to float the wounded doe.

-----

EXHIBIT 12 (p. 246):

Mergansers
       fans
            on their heads

Thoughts on things
       fold unfold
             above the river beds

-----

EXHIBIT 13 (p. 264):

I grew in green
slide and slant
     of shore and shade
          Child-time – wade
thru weeds

***

Continued here.