Quotes from Lorine Niedecker

What would they say if they knew I sit for two months on six lines of poetry?

Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

Smile / to see the lake / lay / the still sky / And / out for an easy / make / the dragonfly.

Strange—we are always inhabiting more than one realm of existence—but they all fit in if the art is right.

O my floating lifeDo not save lovefor thingsThrow thingsto the flood

Nobody, nothingever gave megreater thingthan timeunless lightand silencewhich if intensemakes sound

I rose from marsh mud algae, equisetum, willows, sweet green, noisy birds and frogs.

What would they say if they knew I sit for two months on six lines of poetry?

Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt? But if transport's the problem - they tell me get a job and earn yourself an automobile-I'd rather collect my parts as I go: chair, desk, house and crankshaft Shakespeare. Generator boy, Paul, love is carried if it's held.

Poet's Work" Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade I learned to sit at desk and condense No layoffs from this condensery

I was the solitary plover a pencil for a wing-bone From the secret notes I must tilt upon the pressure execute and adjust In us sea-air rhythm "We live by the urgent wave of the verse

Know amazedly how often one takes his madness into his own hands and keeps it.

What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light. Time is white mosquitoes bite I've spent my life on nothing. The thought that stings. How are you, Nothing, sitting around with Something's wife. Buzz and burn is all I learn I've spent my life on nothing. I'm pillowed and padded, pale and puffing lifting household stuffing— carpets, dishes benches, fishes I've spent my life in nothing.