SOURCE: Davie, Donald. “Lyric Minimum & Epic Scope: Lorine Niedecker.” PN Review 8, no. 5 (1981): 31-33.

In the following essay, Davie discusses the use of Great Lakes history in Niedecker's poetry, as well as Niedecker's use of grammar structure and prose.

Lorine Niedecker's ‘Lake Superior’, as it appeared in her sumptuously printed North Central (Fulcrum Press, 1968), consists of twelve short or very short passages of verse. Accordingly it can be quoted in full:

In every part of every living thing is stuff that once was rock 

In blood the minerals of the rock 

Iron the common element of earth in rocks and freighters 

Sault Sainte Marie—big boats coal-black and iron-ore-red topped with what white castlework 

The waters working together                     internationally Gulls playing both sides 

Radisson: ‘a laborinth of pleasure’ this world of the Lake 

Long hair, long gun 

Fingernails pulled out by Mohawks 

                                                                      (The long                                                                                 canoes) ‘Birch Bark           and white...