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Full Text
Edited by Peter Dent
Interim Press, 1983
How shocking to learn in Peter Dent's preface to The Full Note: Lorine Niedecker that "in 1966, she could write (to Charles Tomlinson) 'England is dear to my heart - notice of LN so much stronger than in this country,' when the superb Fulcrum Press editions of her work were destined to be pulped ___ "No wonder North Central and My Life By Water are impossible to trace and, more important, that attention to her poetry has been minimal. Only one full-length work (a collection of essays and appreciations published as a special issue of Truck magazine, 1975) has appeared since her death in 1970. Now from England comes the first book on Lorine Niedecker's poetry, giving her the notice that she cherished 20 years ago.
The Full Note is 100 pages densely packed with tributes, critical appraisals, two of her long poems, "Wintergreen Ridge" and "Darwin," and fragments of letters to Cid Corman and Kenneth Cox. The best of the criticism already printed in American and English periodicals finds safekeeping here, thanks to the good judgment of editor, poet, and publisher, Peter Dent.
The survival of Lorine Niedecker's poetry is due almost entirely to the work of poets. Poets first recognized and lauded her. Basil Bunting: "No one is so subtle with so few words"; "One of the finest American poets at all, besides being easily the finest female American poet . . . LN never fails: whatever she writes is excellent." Gilbert Sorrentino: ". . .remarkable poetry, as in Catullus and Emily Dickinson." Louis Zukofsky: "I read only two modern women poets, Moore and Niedecker. One feels closer to Niedecker." Peter Yates: "Lorine Niedecker is the most absolute poetess in our language since Emily Dickinson." Poets published her too: Ian Hamilton Finlay's Wild Hawthorne Press published My...