Authors: Lorine Niedecker
redcoats there
3
Elk Hill destroyed—
Cornwallis
carried off 30 slaves
Jefferson:
Were it to give them freedom
he'd have done right
4
South of France
To gaze
alone through the whole
Speculate
on the causes of sea color
Here concur
air, earth and water
…
Men at Paris die
from great cold
as do our American cattle
reasons the same—
want of feed and housing
Ill-governed France
but its soil good
For America
I taste their glorious wine
note how they make
Parmesan cheese
Under penalty of law
slip rice out of Lombardy
Around Nantes the ragged people
eat rye
and the women smite the anvil
….
Roman temple
“simple and sublime”
Maria Cosway on
his mind
white column
and arch
of the truest
proportions
5
To daughter Patsy: Read—
read Livy
No person full of work
was ever hysterical
Learn music, drawing
dancing
(I calculate 14 to 1
in marriage
she will draw
a blockhead)
Science also
Patsy
6
I was confident
the French Revolution
would end well
Adams differed: What is freedom
to their thousands upon thousands
who cannot read or write—
“impracticable as for the Elephants Lions
Tigers Panthers Wolves and Bears
in the Royal Menagerie of Versailles”
I gave the Lafayette dinner
ten days before the fall
of the Bastille
Their cool argument
“disfigured by no tinsel”
worthy of Xenophon
Plato, Cicero
7
Agreed with Adams:
spermaceti oil to Portugal
(for their church candles)
and salt fish
U.S. salt fish preferred
above all other
8
Jefferson of Patrick Henry
backwoods fiddler statesman:
“He spoke as Homer wrote”
Henry eyed our minister at Paris—
the Bill of Rights hassel—
“he remembers…
in splendor and dissipation
He thinks yet of bills of rights”
9
True, French frills and lace
for Jefferson, sword and belt
but follow the Court to Fontainbleau
he could not—
house rent would have left him
nothing to eat
…
He bowed to those he met
and talked with arms folded
He could be trimmed
by a two-month migraine
and yet
stand up
10
Dear Polly:
I said No—no frost
in Virginia
The strawberries were safe
I'd have heard—I'm in
that kind of correspondence
with a young daughter—
if they were not
Now I must retract
I shrink from it
11
On view in the capital
his invention
the moldboard plow
Robert Fulton's dynamometer
tested the amount of force
to pull it
On view—to turn the ground
of knowledge
12
Political honors “splendid torments”
“if one could establish an absolute
power of silence over oneself”
When I set out for Monticello—
My grandchildren, could they
not know me?
a good housejoiner will go with me
How are my young chestnut trees?
13
What is my religion?
Don't pin me down on the mysteries—
three are one and one is three
and yet the one not three
and the three not one
Let us accept the precepts common
to all religions and let alone
the particular dogmas
in which all religions differ
14
The old grudge would always pop up
Adams: Where was you?
Dear Adams: I was there—I was a Stoic
but I longed for Tranquility
Horace, Epicurus
I value the passions
(the senses stimulate the mind)
though yours drew you away from me
Adams: I have no doubt you was “fast asleep
in philosophical Tranquility
when ten thousand People paraded
the streets of Philadelphia”
15
Hamilton and the bankers
would make my country Carthage
I am abandoning the rich—
their dinner parties
I shall eat my simlins
with the class of science
or not at all
Next year the last of labors
among conflicting parties
Then my family
we shall sow our cabbages
together
16
We must hope for a natural aristocracy
of philosophy and art
Remember—Adams again: the greengrocer's daughter
she walks the streets of London dayly
spinach on her head
The Painters see her lovely face
elegant figure, she sitts for them
“The scientific Sir Wm. Hamilton
outbids the Painters, sends her to Schools
for a genteel Education, marries her
The Lady not only causes the Triumphs of the Nile
of Copenhagen and Trafalgar
but separates Naples from France
and banishes the King and Queen of Sicily
Such is the aristocracy
of the natural Talent of Beauty”
17
The delicious flower
of the acacia
or Mimosa Nilotica
from Mr. Lomax
18
Polly Jefferson at 8 had crossed
to father and sister in Paris
by way of London—Abigail
embraced her—Adams said
“in all my life I never saw
more charming child”
Death of Polly, 25,
Monticello
19
My harpsichord
my alabaster vase
and bridle bit bound
for Alexandria, Virginia
The good sea weather
of retirement
The drift and suck
and die-down of life
20
These were my passions:
Monticello and the temples
of learning and of law
I passed on to carpenters
bricklayers what I knew
and to an Italian sculptor
how to turn a volute
on a pillar
Approach the campus rotunda
from lower to upper
terrace—Cicero
had levels
21
Adams envied him
his “Eyes, hand and Horse”
his own eyes dim
Ah one should not envy
Tom Jefferson's cantering
rheumatism
22
Body leaving, let mind leave
Let dome live, the spherical dome
and colonnade
Martha (Patsy) stay
The Committee of Safety
must be warned
Stay youth—Anne and Ellen
the telescope, the bantams
and the seeds of the senega root
Revised to the present text for
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 57-64, with variant Arabic numerals.
BC
uses Roman numerals and omits the final line of VI (“Patsy”).
VV excerpts only
My wife is ill!
And I sit
waiting
for a quorum
The Ballad of Basil
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 31, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).
Wilderness
Unpublished [H&SF].
On her tape recording, she titles the poem, “Wild Man,” hence
BC
's use of the same title. CC's transcription of “Wild Man” used posthumously in
Montemora
2 (Summer 1976).
Consider
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Untitled in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 56, where the poem begins: Consider the alliance—
Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).
Otherwise
Unpublished [H&SF].
In the 13-poem MS dated Jan. 1958, where the poem is titled “
Letter/of Gerard Manley Hopkins,”
a variant line 9 reads: By the way I've not found
Revised to the present text for H&SF.
For
BC
, CC transcribed LN's tape-recorded reading of the poem, hence the variant lineation and the title
“Gerard Manley Hopkins.”
Nursery Rhyme
Unpublished [H&SF].
On the tape recording, she omits both title and subtitle, hence its untitled appearance in
BC.
LN's “that” of her line 9 is easily mistaken on the tape recording for the “It” of CC's transcribed line 8 in
BC.
LN to LZ, Nov. 18, 1962: “Mont[gomery] Ward man came and fixed pump—he cdn't have done better if he'd been ‘the greatest plumber in all London’ as Hunt's neighbors called the one that lived near em. A model now of silent perfection, that pump, between drawings of water. Greatest plumber poem finished…” (
NCZ
325).
Three Americans
Unpublished [H&SF].
An early version dated July 23, 1970, forms part of the Roub Collection:
I
John Adams was our man
but delicate beauty
touched the other one—
an architect
and a woman artist
walked beside Jefferson
II
Abigail
(long face horse-name)
of stony acre
cheesemaker, chickenraiser
spoke, wrote
for John and TJ to savour
III
The tragedies
The men in the boxes—
Jefferson mourned: to arrive
in Paris just too late
to see Diderot
alive
LN's annotation: “(I give three packages of gum and cattails in tall grass for a title) (But o my God what travail till this was completed) Abigail is Mrs. John Adams. The name Gail is wonderful but that terribly prosaic and kitchen-maid Abi preceding is horrible. But what a wonderful original woman.”
Revised to the present text for H&SF: “savour” is LN's spelling.
On the tape recording, she omits the title, hence its untitled appearance in
BC.
POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE
Blue and white Unpublished in book form [EA, VV, H&SF].
A separate poem in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 54, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).
The soil is poor Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].
The first of four
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
in
Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 32.
Michelangelo
Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].
The fourth of four
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
in
Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 32.
Wallace Stevens
Unpublished in book form [EA, VV, H&SF].
A separate poem in Origin ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 56, and in
BC
(1976).
Stony Brook's
other two
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
are “The man of law” and “Not all harsh sounds displease” (see p. 271).
BC's
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
duplicate
Stony Brook's.
SUBLIMINAL
The title is first used in H&SF.
Sleep's dream Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
A separate poem in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 55, with two additional lines at the end of the poem:
and my sometimes
happy fatherphosphor
Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).
Waded, watched, warbled Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
In
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 55, this two-stanza poem is followed by three bullets and a further three stanzas:
Faithful to the marsh
of my childhood
we camp on the dryest portion
In April's flood-freeze
crystals hang low on the bush
all day
Then green—we're en rapport
with grass as once or twice
with humans
Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).
Revised to the present text for H&SF.
Illustrated night clock's; Honest; and Night Unpublished [H&SF].
After seeing the H&SF typescript, CC published the complete five-poem sequence, “SUBLIMINAL,” in
Origin
ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 32-33.
LZ
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Origin
ser. 3, 12 (Jan. 1969): 3:
line 2: waved toward Peck Slip
line 5: was “Test”
Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).
LN to CC, Aug. 6, 1968: “Peck Slip—you know—it's the fish market area my father shipping carp from our lake in refrigerated cars to Peck Slip. We followed Jewish holidays—the buyers did—but LZ says his folks did not eat carp. LZ was at our place in ′36 & my father spoke confidentially and kindly in his gentle fashion to him and LZ was touched” (
BYHM
170).
Peace
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 54, and
BC
(1976).
LN to LZ, April 1956: “AEn[eas McAllister] came over to show me two tiny music box movements—wound one up (Strauss waltzes) and went out into the dark night with it to go home—a kind of musical firefly” (
NCZ
227).
Thomas Jefferson Inside
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Tuatara
2 (June 1970): 8, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).
Foreclosure
Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Tuatara
2 (June 1970): 8, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).
HIS CARPETS FLOWERED
Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].