As part of my quest, I found and printed out this article:
"Lorine Niedecker: Auto/biography and Poetry" by Lorna Jowett, http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/lorine-niedecker-crit_14/
I also just copied a section, section IV to be exact, of "Progression" from Jenny Penberthy's Lorine Niedecker: Colelcted Works. I did that thing that I used to do when learning my lines in a play: fold the paper in half, write my lines/the poem on one side and my cues/my notes on the other. Why? I don't know. It's time for some close reading Just for Fun and not for Academic Purposes, is why, I guess. And what's my first instinct while closely reading, now that I've had a year to process my critical thesis?
1. hand write
2. re-read in my hand and have original in front, especially to correct any typos
3. say aloud
4. get distracted during this and start to wander into making notes - specifically about What Is Happening in the poem, ex "{a green frog says all this" about lines 2-8
5. wander further away and think about literary criticism I'd like to read about this as I go along
6. find & print
7. blog and link
8. begin listing off what I'm doing
9. stop list to go back to it EXCEPT
I think I should also type it up here. So...[stop to take multivitamins - man, I have severe ADD]
from "Progression"
IV
Last lines being sentimental, reaction
is in the first of the cold. The contemporary scene is,
said the green frog by the charcoal wood, false
in every particular but no less admirable for that,
and isn't it humorous to designate at all?
I take into my hole, said he, the curse
that hands over more than one critic, this
that if forgiven tassels are lost.
Well, and the sun does set short in winter....
What's the play? The sensitive lawyer would have told
any woman her hands were as beautiful as if gloved
but for fear of having been quoted.
At the Capitol, cheese legislation only sets silk hats
tipping, rats divine, toward feline waistbands.
At home, it's blizzard or a curved banana-moon
on a window sash, soap flakes on wash day
and door knobs wet; hornets' nests in tobacco pipes.
I must possess myself, get back into pure duration,
or I should like to be an orator and rise
to my full height, or now that roads are closed
stop quietly in print the one available weather:
how the head hums, men of Ireland, and it goes
the next log on the hearth from violins to harlequins
to modern women and violins again, and the last
determination coincides with the first, and so then
summer has not been since the bliss and doll's house lady
and all that waxing of the lily and sweet care
of people on the stem....I remember a garden:
exigential, or violet, I've forgotten, but delphinium
with suspect of turquoise, formulosos deterred
at the start from interval form by trick of eye
or soul or sun and since by whom...you
swinging your cape too far to the left, the effect
is blue, not periwinkle; you triumphant over cauliflower
polonaise; you full of principles; and you crying
crush infamy when you should be shaking hands
with the Cardinal. The most public-cant-and-cabbage-
interruption comes, however, from circles where
the farm question is discussed, -- a white dome logic
no wayside strabismic house, rafters owling out
the night would recognize; no talk there, none,
of why there's nothing like a good warm cow
when the wind's in the west.
"Lorine Niedecker: Auto/biography and Poetry" by Lorna Jowett, http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/lorine-niedecker-crit_14/
I also just copied a section, section IV to be exact, of "Progression" from Jenny Penberthy's Lorine Niedecker: Colelcted Works. I did that thing that I used to do when learning my lines in a play: fold the paper in half, write my lines/the poem on one side and my cues/my notes on the other. Why? I don't know. It's time for some close reading Just for Fun and not for Academic Purposes, is why, I guess. And what's my first instinct while closely reading, now that I've had a year to process my critical thesis?
1. hand write
2. re-read in my hand and have original in front, especially to correct any typos
3. say aloud
4. get distracted during this and start to wander into making notes - specifically about What Is Happening in the poem, ex "{a green frog says all this" about lines 2-8
5. wander further away and think about literary criticism I'd like to read about this as I go along
6. find & print
7. blog and link
8. begin listing off what I'm doing
9. stop list to go back to it EXCEPT
I think I should also type it up here. So...[stop to take multivitamins - man, I have severe ADD]
from "Progression"
IV
Last lines being sentimental, reaction
is in the first of the cold. The contemporary scene is,
said the green frog by the charcoal wood, false
in every particular but no less admirable for that,
and isn't it humorous to designate at all?
I take into my hole, said he, the curse
that hands over more than one critic, this
that if forgiven tassels are lost.
Well, and the sun does set short in winter....
What's the play? The sensitive lawyer would have told
any woman her hands were as beautiful as if gloved
but for fear of having been quoted.
At the Capitol, cheese legislation only sets silk hats
tipping, rats divine, toward feline waistbands.
At home, it's blizzard or a curved banana-moon
on a window sash, soap flakes on wash day
and door knobs wet; hornets' nests in tobacco pipes.
I must possess myself, get back into pure duration,
or I should like to be an orator and rise
to my full height, or now that roads are closed
stop quietly in print the one available weather:
how the head hums, men of Ireland, and it goes
the next log on the hearth from violins to harlequins
to modern women and violins again, and the last
determination coincides with the first, and so then
summer has not been since the bliss and doll's house lady
and all that waxing of the lily and sweet care
of people on the stem....I remember a garden:
exigential, or violet, I've forgotten, but delphinium
with suspect of turquoise, formulosos deterred
at the start from interval form by trick of eye
or soul or sun and since by whom...you
swinging your cape too far to the left, the effect
is blue, not periwinkle; you triumphant over cauliflower
polonaise; you full of principles; and you crying
crush infamy when you should be shaking hands
with the Cardinal. The most public-cant-and-cabbage-
interruption comes, however, from circles where
the farm question is discussed, -- a white dome logic
no wayside strabismic house, rafters owling out
the night would recognize; no talk there, none,
of why there's nothing like a good warm cow
when the wind's in the west.