New Goose

by Lorine Niedecker

Poetry. This book collects the 86 poems that survive from the Mother Goose-influenced period of Lorine 1935 to 1945. The NEW GOOSE poems share the anti-authoritarian, subversive bent of their models, reflecting on the politics and economics of the the Depression, free market economics, socialism, and war. A key figure in the "Objectivist" poetry movement, Neidecker's poetic influence continues to be strongly felt. Her GRANITE PAIL, first published in 1985, is an SPD bestseller. "My man says the wind blows from the South,/ we go out fishing, he has no luck,/ I catch a dozen, that burns him up,/ I face the east and the wind's in my mouth,/ but my man has to have it in the south" -- from NEW GOOSE.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

98 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

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

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambiguous as all-get-out, the poems of New Goose certainly entertain. Perhaps by really being at least part-meaningless, they succeed too in subverting the reader's expectations by reaching no resolution, and the absurdity becomes the joke: to laugh at our own need for narrative, our own desire to be at the top of our hierarchy?

Or:

Two important functions of Lorine Niedecker's poems in New Goose might well be to entertain and subvert. Because each poem is so short--sparse lines, small words, simple sentences--they have the ability to be read in the same way one would read a slogan. Niedecker's rhythmic nursery-rhyme-like phrasing also lends itself to being read out loud; in fact, her use of rural diction adds yet another basis for believing that the poems are meant to be spoken as well as read. Because of this, these poems fall somewhere between commercial jingles and protest chants... Interesting, no?

[Gerardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Niedecker's book is like living once again. Every single line in her poetry is like breahing literature. I love, adore her as a writer. I believe she is the single poet who truly represents organic poetry. She knew how to write about nature and settin. GREAT BOOK!!!!

["Robert Ekberg" · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okej gås.

[Hind · Rating 4 out of 5]

I said to my head, Write something.
It looked me dead in the face.
Look around, dear head, you've never read
of the ground that takes you away.
Speed up, speed up, the frosted windshield's
a fern spray.

[zuzu · Rating 5 out of 5]

niedecker slays and i think she knows it