It still amazes me that more people who love poetry don't know about the revolutionary, elegant, deceptively simple, simply deceptive, American work of Lorine Niedecker, a quasi-member of the Objectivist movement and a unqiue and solitary figure. A woman writer invested in so many American traditions -- Emily Dickinson's hermetic sensibility, William Carlos Williams' love of the ordinary -- Niedecker is truly one of the great poets of the century. I don't think you'll regret buying this book -- though you'll probably end up complaining, as I do daily, about the lack of a Collected Poems as yet in print.

Let me tell you about Lorine Niedecker. She did not apologize for being born. This volume--far exceeding the much derided previous collected "From This Condensery"--represents the very best of Twentieth Century American poetry, let there be no doubt. More than just poems that echo Dickinson, Zukovsky, Williams, and who else, "Collected Works" will now surely stand as one of the cornerstones of American poetry, thanks to the hard work of editor Jenny Penberthy. The best of these poems--"Darwin" and "Paen to Place", among others--are beautiful distillations of the real. And other pieces, such as the radio plays, show great, surreal humor. Lorine from Ft. Atkinson is one the best.

"Poetry is the folktales of the mind." --Lorine Niedecker

"Ah, the cottage industry for Lorine Niedecker marches onward. Just in is Lorine Niedecker's infamous NEW GOOSE (Rumor Books, Berkeley): there must be something in the Berkeley drinking water because for over 35 years everything I've received from there has that certain edge of sparkle and completeness; and most recently just plain beautiful jobs. This NEW GOOSE is so fine looking that I stood it up as a showcase in our little bookshop. But then there is no one out here visiting in the woods at our on-line shop but I like it each time I walk in the door. Sidewalk booksellers should display this book at the front counter. Tip-top Niedecker scholar Jenny Penberthy sings its graces in a brief introduction describing the 86 poems collected herein survived from Niedecker's 1935-1945 "Mother Goose influenced" period which should be halfway taken seriously from the nursery lore to the poet's own axiom: Poetry is the folktales of the mind: so be prepared to be taken to pasture with one of the more electric minds of twentieth century poetry. An absolute must for any poetry library." (Bob Arnold)

This beautiful little 100-page volume (with a four-color cover collage by artist Amy Trachtenberg) is an alternative presentation of Lorine Niedecker's striking, original early work, edited by Jenny Penberthy. NEW GOOSE was Niedecker's first book -- but this volume includes all the New Goose poems Niedecker wrote. Jenny Penberthy, editor of Niedecker's COLLECTED WORKS (UC Press, 2002), writes in her editor's note to NEW GOOSE: "This book collects the 86 poems that survive from Lorine Niedecker's Mother Goose-influenced period-1935 to 1945. . . . The NEW GOOSE poems share the anti-authoritarian, subversive bent of their models, reflecting on the politics and economics of the time-- the Depression, free market economics, socialism, and war. . . . 'I am close to Tristan Tzara' she told Ezra Pound in 1934. In the spirit of proximity to Tzara, the nursery rhyme, and Niedecker's own anti-hierarchic practice, I have organized this collection as an alphabet book." The first book in the new series Rumor Books, from Listening Chamber, in Berkeley --handsome small editions of fugitive, hard-to-come-by, or yet-to-appear works from the century just passed: books rumored to exist.

This book, Solitary Plover ...is an excellent introduction to poet Lorine Niedecker's life and work. Niedecker is beginning to be recognized as a major poet of the 20th century. Her work has invited comparison to Emily Dickinson. Phyllis Walsh, the author, lived in the area of Wisconsin that Niedecker was from, and was one of the first to write about this poet who called herself a "solitary plover...