Spring Fever

Lorine Niedecker
















from Next Year or I Fly My Rounds, Tempestuous

January 1935
Wade all life
backward to its
source which
runs too far
ahead.

The satisfactory
emphasis is on
revolving.
Don't send
steadily; after
you know me
I'll be no one.

Jan.-Feb. 1935
To give
heat is within
the control of
every human
being.

March-April 1935
Her under-
standing of him
is more touch-
ing than intelli-
gent; he holds
her knees with-
out her knowing
how she's boned.

April 1935
I can always
go back to
fertilizations,
kimonos, wrap-
arounds and
diatribes.

July 1935
I talk at the top
of my white
resignment.

Sept.-Oct. 1935
All night,
all night,
and what is
it on a post-
card.

Oct.-Nov. 1935
That's sweet
on a target -
nobody'd know
the ham line.
Holes are too
late nowa-
days. One
freak ass to
wire.

December 1935
Transubstan-
tiation of acro-
bats, moon-eyes
and downward
mouth. Round-
acres intrude
a nose where
no listening
ever came.
Smooth out the
substance of your
acetelyne worry.


These are selections from a found poem of Niedecker's that Jenny Penberthy, who edited Niedecker's Collected Works, discovered during her research. Each aphoristic poem was pasted on one of those desk calendars, the kind with the hopeful homilies, apparently as a gift to Louis Zukofsky. Penberthy says the poems reminded her of Dickinson and I felt that too as I typed the excerpts -- thought of D's Wild Nights. I'm drawn to the form and fragment. She wrote them by hand and punched holes in them and tied them all together with red ribbon so there's the making of a day book in a way. And the freedom of her language -- so unconstrained. Sometimes it's good to break away from the boundaries of the blank page and see what happens.


When Ecstasy is Inconvenient
Feign a great calm;
all gay transport soon ends.
Chant: who knows -
flight's end or flight's beginning
for the resting gull?

Heart, be still.
Say there is money but it rusted;
say the time of moon is not right for escape.
It's the color in the lower sky
too broadly suffused,
or the wind in my tie.

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