Lake Superior

by Lorine Niedecker, Joshua Beckman (Editor)

"Niedecker [is] one of the most important and original poets of this past century."—August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books

Lake Superior is a compilation of writings around Lorine Niedecker's poem of the same title—strata that inform the poem's ecological and historical resonance.

From "Lake Superior Country":

Every bit of you is a bit of the earth . . .
So—here we go. Maybe as rocks and I pass each other I could say how-do-you-do to an agate.

Lorine Niedecker was a major American poet often connected with the Objectivists. She lived in Wisconsin from 1903 to 1970.

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Essays

91 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2013

About the author

Niedecker's earliest poetry was marked by her reading of the Imagists, whose work she greatly admired and of surrealism. In 1931, she read the Objectivist issue of Poetry. She was fascinated by what she saw and immediately wrote to Louis Zukofsky, who had edited the issue, sending him her latest poems. This was the beginning of what proved to be a most important relationship for her development as a poet.

Zukofsky suggested sending them to Poetry, where they were accepted for publication. Suddenly, Niedecker found herself in direct contact with the American poetic avant-garde. Near the end of 1933, Niedecker visited Zukofsky in New York City for the first time and became pregnant with his child. He insisted that she have an abortion, which she did, although they remained friends and continued to carry on a mutually beneficial correspondence following Niedecker's return to Fort Atkinson.

From the mid 1930s, Niedecker moved away from surrealism and started writing poems that engaged more directly with social and political realities and on her own immediate rural surroundings. Her first book, New Goose
Niedecker was not to publish another book for fifteen years. In 1949, she began work on a poem sequence called For Paul, named for Zukofsky's son. Unfortunately, Zukofsky was uncomfortable with what he viewed as the overly personal and intrusive nature of the content of the 72 poems she eventually collected under this title and discouraged publication. Partly because of her geographical isolation, even magazine publication was not easily available and in 1955 she claimed that she had published work only six times in the previous ten years.

Reviews

[rory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book but I don't know whether it is good. I just really like Lake Superior.

[M.L. Rio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The commentary is significantly more interesting than the poem itself--which seems to be kind of par for the course in ecopoetics. (There are only so many random arrangements and variations of the words "rock," "tree," "water," and "sky" that I can read before wanting to--ironically--drown myself.)

[siena · Rating 4 out of 5]

core poem back in print #yay

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting and inspiring books I have ever read on the subject of conducting research and writing a research-based poem. Leave it to Niedecker to point the way.

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in this order:

Lorine Niedecker - "Lake Superior" (1968)
Douglas Crase - "Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime" (1992)
Excerpt from the writings of Pierre Radisson (1661)
Excerpt from Back Roads to Far Towns by Bashō (1689)
Excerpt from the writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1832)
"Tour 14A" from Wisconsin, A Guide to the Badger State (1941)
Aldo Leopold - "On a Monument to the Pigeon" (1949)
Three Letters from Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman (1966)
Lorine Niedecker - Lake Superior Country, a journal (1966)
Lorine Niedecker - "Lake Superior" (1968)

So, outside of the first two, in chronological order. Niedecker worked on the guide to Wisconsin for the WPA, which has details unmistakably hers: "Scattered in the middle distance are the Apostle Islands, a maze of red cliffs, tawny beaches, and channels of cerulean blue, where wisps of smoke drift from the hidden huts of island fisherfolk." This is a fascinating exegesis on the genesis of a poem as strong and gorgeous as the very gneiss-cleft craggy lakelands it articulates. Radisson's writings are hardly the most engaging thing in the world as it stands and the syntactically clumsy rendition of Bashō by Corman irks me somewhat, but everything else here is bound to captivate you if you have any interest in the northern American midwest, its geology & watersheds, or just American poetry in general. Niedecker is a national treasure.

Ruby of corundum
lapis lazuli
from changing limestone
glow-apricot red-brown
carnelian sard

Greek named
Exodus-antique
kicked up in America's
Northwest
you have been in my mind
between my toes
agate

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A kind of portfolio here--Niedecker's poem "Lake Superior," plus writings that influenced (or potentially influenced) its composition: her essays on the Lake area written for the WPA in the 1940s, her notes written during the vacation that immediately preceded her writing of the poem in 1966, letters written immediately before and after the vacation, poetry by Basho, an excerpt from an essay by Aldo Leopold (who was her boss at the WPA) about the area, excerpts from journals by two early explorers of the area--Radisson and Schoolcraft--, and a perceptive explication of "LS" by Douglas Crase.

Why don't more publisher take this kind of holistic approach to literary works?

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fantastic exploration of geography, geology, and ethnography. Histories intermingled. Stories interwoven. An amazing collection of writings that leaves the reader pondering and pondering further--exactly what Niedecker would have wanted derived from her original writings, which were derived from originality itself.

[Kristyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spent a fair amount of time on the shores of Lake Superior, having camped there every summer of my childhood, and then lived there for 8 years of my adulthood, and so reading Lorine Niedecker's account of her travel was in some ways an exploration of comparison between her experience 50 years ago and mine today. Much is still the same.
The combination of works in this book from Lorine Niedecker's poems and journals, to travel writings of Basho, to accounts by various explorers of the Upper Midwest fit well together and the styles provided enough contrast to make each stand out. Aldo Leopold's discussion of the pigeon prompted me to think of how much more we've lost now, for we are long past the "decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember," and long into the time when "only the hills will know" the memory of the pigeon. But that we can mourn what we've lost is what makes us human.
The description of the land in Schoolcraft's writings is still accurate in many places today "wherever the stream touches the solid land, grey pine, and tamarack are conspicuous, and clumps of alder here take the places of willow. Moss attaches itself to almost everything," (Schoolcraft) but Radisson's account felt more like the middle of a story where I wasn't sure of the villain, and the ending was disturbing: "We killed our four prisoners because they embarrassed us."
All in all, a very specific and cohesive collection of writings about Lake Superior and the Upper Midwest in general.

[Camille Dungy]

Summertime means lake time for many of us, and there is no bigger lake in North America than Lake Superior. It seemed reasonable and necessary, therefore, that I point you to one of the most remarkable books about that most remarkable lake. I’m cheating my own criteria a little because the book I am recommending was published a few years after 2010, but the long poem around which Joshua Beckman centers the rest of what’s collected in this volume (Wave Books, 2013) was written after a road trip Niedecker (1903–1970) took with her husband in 1966, well before the 2010 cutoff for this feature. (See also Niedecker’s Collected Works from University of California Press, 2004.) A travelogue, scientific treatise, ethnography, cartographic sketch, geological survey, and much more, Niedecker’s Lake Superior has been hailed as a masterpiece of docupoetry, an early model for ecopoetry, and a gobsmackingly good poem. The Wave Books edition also collects Niedecker’s journals from around the time of writing the poem, as well as related writing by Aldo Leopold, Bashō, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and more.

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/07/thi...

[Curtis Anthony Bozif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really rewarding little book. But, unfortunately, I guess, I found Niedecker's poem at the beginning the least interesting part of the book. I should say that I was not familiar with her work before reading this book, but I was very familiar with the Great Lakes and their history.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd love to see a series of books emulating this book—a single poem, unpacked through texts from other disciplines, other time periods, other genres.

[Eric Olsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

a history of the great lake of the United States. Written in 1943, so it is good history. God blessed this nation with this shipping outlet and the wealth of riches in its area. God bless America!

[Hannah OReilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rocks are just not for me

[Laura T]

I love you

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

i am a eager but clumsy reader of poetry, so the contextual supplements of this wave books edition were most welcome; some of them were clumsy in their own way, but it all worked out in the end. someone pressed niedecker on me as an example of i'm not sure what, but i generally like it. it's just some gentle, natural, image-rich verse about the history and geology of lake superior. the poem is short (maybe 500 words) and followed by niedecker's working notes (the poem was born of a summer road trip around the lake with her husband, a native of the region). the notes are really impressive, not in and of themselves, but in concert with the poem itself and a few contemporaenous letters that show niedecker capturing and polishing images and ideas. there's an overheated but not useless critical essay, plus some bits of aldo leopold, basho, voyageur, early gringo settlers.

some treasures snipped from this:
"they will not only go when they are bid to go but they will go unmurmuringly" (new life objective: be unmurmuring more often)
the french explorer radisson exclaims "We were Cesars [sic], nobody to contradict us"

Aldo Leopold: The Cro-Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks .... Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us ... To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons. To see America as history, to conceive of destiny as a becoming...

my favorite moment is though is when Niedecker spies in the corruption of language (Sault becomes Soo, bonjour becomes bosho) the grand sloppy gestures of geology.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less than half of this book is Niedecker's work: the remainder is work about her or related to the Lake Superior region, the subject of her poem of the same title. Included are an excerpt from the WPA book on Wisconsin, which Niedecker worked on; her journal notes from a trip she and her husband took in the area; excerpts from the writings of early explorers. Not an essential book but an interesting one. Niedecker's poems are, however, essential, whether you read the complete edition from U of California Press or a selection such as Granite Pail.

[Linda Kenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating may be a bit harsh but i blame the editor (who is not identified) not the poet. It would have been helpful to have the materials tied together with some introductions. I did not know Niedecker's work before buying this book on a whim. It did pique my interest in the history of Lake Superior both geologically and historically.

[Hao Guang Tse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niedecker's debt to Marianne Moore is obvious--the incisive observation and use of colour is all there, as is the eccentricity. Lovely read!

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part poetry, part history of the upper Midwest area.