Last updated: March 18, 2022
Place
Lorine Niedecker Cottage
Photograph by Rowan Davidson, courtesy of Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office
Quick Facts
Location:
W7307 Blackhawk Island Road, Sumner, Wisconsin
Significance:
Literature
Designation:
Listed in the National Register – Reference number 100002106
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
MANAGED BY:
The Lorine Niedecker Cottage, constructed in 1946, is a largely intact, small Rustic style home of the notable Modernist poet Lorine Niedecker. The cottage is located in an area known as Blackhawk Island in Sumner, Wisconsin. It is a simple 20 foot by 20 foot, single story, wood frame building with painted split-log vertical siding, resting on an elevated concrete foundation. Lorine Niedecker lived in the cottage from its construction in 1946 until she moved away in 1963. The floor is of plywood panels, and the walls are of exposed wood composed of the back of the horizontal wood exterior sheathing. The interior of the cottage is spare and parts of it are unfinished. It was in this cabin, where at a small desk placed in front of a window, Lorine wrote most of her poetry.
Niedecker is widely considered to be one of the seminal modern Objectivist poets of the mid-twentieth century. Niedecker's influence extended far outside of the small community where she lived. Niedecker’s poetry owes much to her life and the place where she lived, and the subject matter of much of her work- in the Objectivist tradition directly references her home and its environs. While her work was largely unknown during her lifetime, she took part in the discourse on modern poetics from the 1930s through the 1960s, her work was more frequently published later in her life, and posthumously she has been published and has received critical acclaim. Her work, often focusing on the concept of place, biography, and the subconscious, is considered some of the finest examples of objectivist, surrealist, and folk poetry of the period.
Lorine Faith Niedecker was born on May 12, 1903 in a small summer cottage associated with the Fountain House on Blackhawk Island Road. As a child, Lorine Niedecker quickly developed a reputation as being studious and literary, and earned excellent grades. Her high school teacher, Daisy Lieberman, is credited with inspiring Lorine’s love of poetry. Lorine graduated at the top of her high school class and was accepted to the private liberal arts focused Beloit College. With a reputation as a progressive and arguably feminist school at the time, Beloit College was only 40 miles away from home. She maintained her interest in poetry, joining clubs, writing, and attending lectures. She left college after only two years likely due to financial troubles back home. She was married in 1928, however Lorine did not like being a housewife and the marriage ended in 1929. Lorine started corresponding with the poet Louis Zukofsky and later traveled to New York to stay with him for two years living a bohemian New York lifestyle and meeting many other poets, writers, and editors. Their relationship changed and Lorine moved away in 1934 but they remained friends.
Lorine returned Wisconsin and worked in various writing positions. In 1938 she moved to Madison to work for the Wisconsin Federal Writers Project. She returned to Blackhawk Island in 1942 when her odd writing jobs in Madison ended. Lorine was isolated and unemployed from 1942 to 1944. Eventually she found work as a stenographer and proofreader in addition to helping to take care of her father. Biographies of her life describe her unhappiness during this time 1945 to 1948. In 1946, Lorine told her father she could not live with him and take care of him anymore. Her father built this small wood frame cottage set back from the river as a precaution against flooding and had a small kitchen and heater, an outhouse, and no telephone. She moved into the cabin after its completion and lived there until the end of 1963.
Once back in Wisconsin, folk origins became important to her again. The common tales of her mother were updated, objectified, and made subversive in Niedecker’s poetry. In 1946 her work New Goose, was published, to critical, but not commercial, success. New Goose was an updated take on traditional rhymes and folktales made modern and cutting with topics including poverty, threadbare coats, farmers, destitute women, Audubon, and Van Gogh. The short collection was considered good and especially musical by her peers. The collection placed Lorine Niedecker within the contemporary poetry scene. To some extent Niedecker was consciously creating her own style that, while it borrowed from accepted schools such as Objectivist and folk poetry, it was not easily categorized. These post war years included well known poems and collections such as For Paul and Other Poems, The Years Go By, In Exchange for Haiku, and Home/World.
Traditional lyrical expression emphasized personal imagination, culture, emotions, and memories of the author. For Modernists, it was essential to move away from the personal, and toward an intellectual statement that poetry could make about the world. Questions of impersonality and objectivity were crucial to Modernist poetry. Objectivist poets were a group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by early Modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Louis Zukofsky, one of the most prominent Objectivist poets, helped define the movement by stating that the principals of Objective poetry was to treat the poem as an object, emphasize sincerity, intelligence, and the poet’s ability to look clearly at the world. The core group of Objectivist poets were Americans Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, and the British poet Basil Bunting. Lorine Niedecker became another of the group’s most prominent members. These poets generally suffered critical neglect early in their careers, which was the case with Lorine; however, over time they were to become highly influential for later generations of Modernist poets. Almost all of these poets were urban, many from immigrant backgrounds, and all were men, except Niedecker, who was obviously none of these things. It is important to keep in mind that in literary critique of the time, much of the discussion of her work, and the placement of her in the canon of American poetry, unfortunately dealt with whether she was subordinate to some her male contemporaries (or men in general), such as Zukofsky, despite her arguably being the superior poet.
An Objectivist poet regards the poem as an object apart from its meaning, typically paying more attention to images, structure, and syntax than to a specific theme. It is a radical approach, taking away the traditional ways that language is constructed to convey meaning. Words, phrases, and clauses are intentionally altered; an act of removing words as a direct treatment of the thing (poem), reinforcing the belief that words can lie or only approximate truth. Niedecker, for example, was always condensing her work so that it was simple in appearance and spare in its expression. The linking verbs were often left out to leave more “space” and “quiet” as Niedecker described it, often with the danger of alienating the reader. Niedecker felt her job was to “condense” life into art. Objectivists were interested in the visible world, the object, as a contribution to modern poetry. She often wrote about her family, sometimes taking the voice of one or both of her parents in her poetry, which reflects a respect for her mother and admiration for her father. She also drew on the natural world, specifically around her home on Blackhawk Island.
During her life Niedecker expressed a preference, like many poets, for smaller presses, but was often let down by their lack of resources and abilities to reproduce her work. The list of poetry published during her lifetime is short and only becomes frequent in the 1960s. Only four books, New Goose, My Friend Tree, North Central, and T&G, were published before her death in 1970. Niedecker’s output of completed and recorded work is not large, including only 378 poems of varying length, five radio plays, five short works of prose, and 3 reviews of other works of poetry.
Niedecker was full of contradictions, at least in regards to labels. She was both urbane and isolated, a folk poet and intellectual, a surrealist and objectivist, a Marxist landlord; Niedecker was interested in the commonplace and outside of professional networks. Her poetry can be understood in periods as well, each one representing a different favored mode of work, from modernist folk poetry like New Goose in the 1940s, to haiku like forms in the 1950s, to longer complex poetry like North Central by the late 1960s. Because of these changes and because of her lack of full dedication to any one ideological school, her work is often difficult to label, though it can be contextualized within the wider world of contemporary modern poetry.Although often overlooked during her lifetime, three volumes of poetry have been published since her death in 1970: Blue Chicory (1976), From This Condensery: The Complete Writings of Lorine Niedecker (1985), and The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker (1985). Niedecker has posthumously come to be recognized as one of the best Objectivist modern poets of the mid-twentieth century.
Niedecker is widely considered to be one of the seminal modern Objectivist poets of the mid-twentieth century. Niedecker's influence extended far outside of the small community where she lived. Niedecker’s poetry owes much to her life and the place where she lived, and the subject matter of much of her work- in the Objectivist tradition directly references her home and its environs. While her work was largely unknown during her lifetime, she took part in the discourse on modern poetics from the 1930s through the 1960s, her work was more frequently published later in her life, and posthumously she has been published and has received critical acclaim. Her work, often focusing on the concept of place, biography, and the subconscious, is considered some of the finest examples of objectivist, surrealist, and folk poetry of the period.
Lorine Faith Niedecker was born on May 12, 1903 in a small summer cottage associated with the Fountain House on Blackhawk Island Road. As a child, Lorine Niedecker quickly developed a reputation as being studious and literary, and earned excellent grades. Her high school teacher, Daisy Lieberman, is credited with inspiring Lorine’s love of poetry. Lorine graduated at the top of her high school class and was accepted to the private liberal arts focused Beloit College. With a reputation as a progressive and arguably feminist school at the time, Beloit College was only 40 miles away from home. She maintained her interest in poetry, joining clubs, writing, and attending lectures. She left college after only two years likely due to financial troubles back home. She was married in 1928, however Lorine did not like being a housewife and the marriage ended in 1929. Lorine started corresponding with the poet Louis Zukofsky and later traveled to New York to stay with him for two years living a bohemian New York lifestyle and meeting many other poets, writers, and editors. Their relationship changed and Lorine moved away in 1934 but they remained friends.
Lorine returned Wisconsin and worked in various writing positions. In 1938 she moved to Madison to work for the Wisconsin Federal Writers Project. She returned to Blackhawk Island in 1942 when her odd writing jobs in Madison ended. Lorine was isolated and unemployed from 1942 to 1944. Eventually she found work as a stenographer and proofreader in addition to helping to take care of her father. Biographies of her life describe her unhappiness during this time 1945 to 1948. In 1946, Lorine told her father she could not live with him and take care of him anymore. Her father built this small wood frame cottage set back from the river as a precaution against flooding and had a small kitchen and heater, an outhouse, and no telephone. She moved into the cabin after its completion and lived there until the end of 1963.
Once back in Wisconsin, folk origins became important to her again. The common tales of her mother were updated, objectified, and made subversive in Niedecker’s poetry. In 1946 her work New Goose, was published, to critical, but not commercial, success. New Goose was an updated take on traditional rhymes and folktales made modern and cutting with topics including poverty, threadbare coats, farmers, destitute women, Audubon, and Van Gogh. The short collection was considered good and especially musical by her peers. The collection placed Lorine Niedecker within the contemporary poetry scene. To some extent Niedecker was consciously creating her own style that, while it borrowed from accepted schools such as Objectivist and folk poetry, it was not easily categorized. These post war years included well known poems and collections such as For Paul and Other Poems, The Years Go By, In Exchange for Haiku, and Home/World.
Traditional lyrical expression emphasized personal imagination, culture, emotions, and memories of the author. For Modernists, it was essential to move away from the personal, and toward an intellectual statement that poetry could make about the world. Questions of impersonality and objectivity were crucial to Modernist poetry. Objectivist poets were a group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by early Modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Louis Zukofsky, one of the most prominent Objectivist poets, helped define the movement by stating that the principals of Objective poetry was to treat the poem as an object, emphasize sincerity, intelligence, and the poet’s ability to look clearly at the world. The core group of Objectivist poets were Americans Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, and the British poet Basil Bunting. Lorine Niedecker became another of the group’s most prominent members. These poets generally suffered critical neglect early in their careers, which was the case with Lorine; however, over time they were to become highly influential for later generations of Modernist poets. Almost all of these poets were urban, many from immigrant backgrounds, and all were men, except Niedecker, who was obviously none of these things. It is important to keep in mind that in literary critique of the time, much of the discussion of her work, and the placement of her in the canon of American poetry, unfortunately dealt with whether she was subordinate to some her male contemporaries (or men in general), such as Zukofsky, despite her arguably being the superior poet.
An Objectivist poet regards the poem as an object apart from its meaning, typically paying more attention to images, structure, and syntax than to a specific theme. It is a radical approach, taking away the traditional ways that language is constructed to convey meaning. Words, phrases, and clauses are intentionally altered; an act of removing words as a direct treatment of the thing (poem), reinforcing the belief that words can lie or only approximate truth. Niedecker, for example, was always condensing her work so that it was simple in appearance and spare in its expression. The linking verbs were often left out to leave more “space” and “quiet” as Niedecker described it, often with the danger of alienating the reader. Niedecker felt her job was to “condense” life into art. Objectivists were interested in the visible world, the object, as a contribution to modern poetry. She often wrote about her family, sometimes taking the voice of one or both of her parents in her poetry, which reflects a respect for her mother and admiration for her father. She also drew on the natural world, specifically around her home on Blackhawk Island.
During her life Niedecker expressed a preference, like many poets, for smaller presses, but was often let down by their lack of resources and abilities to reproduce her work. The list of poetry published during her lifetime is short and only becomes frequent in the 1960s. Only four books, New Goose, My Friend Tree, North Central, and T&G, were published before her death in 1970. Niedecker’s output of completed and recorded work is not large, including only 378 poems of varying length, five radio plays, five short works of prose, and 3 reviews of other works of poetry.
Niedecker was full of contradictions, at least in regards to labels. She was both urbane and isolated, a folk poet and intellectual, a surrealist and objectivist, a Marxist landlord; Niedecker was interested in the commonplace and outside of professional networks. Her poetry can be understood in periods as well, each one representing a different favored mode of work, from modernist folk poetry like New Goose in the 1940s, to haiku like forms in the 1950s, to longer complex poetry like North Central by the late 1960s. Because of these changes and because of her lack of full dedication to any one ideological school, her work is often difficult to label, though it can be contextualized within the wider world of contemporary modern poetry.Although often overlooked during her lifetime, three volumes of poetry have been published since her death in 1970: Blue Chicory (1976), From This Condensery: The Complete Writings of Lorine Niedecker (1985), and The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker (1985). Niedecker has posthumously come to be recognized as one of the best Objectivist modern poets of the mid-twentieth century.