Lorine Niedecker’s ‘Condensery’: Nature as Narrative Field
In-Person | Wednesday | May 14 | 7-9pm
In this talk, poet, editor, and critic Victoria Chang will revisit Lorine Niedecker’s Midwestern background and study one of her longer poems, “Paean to Place,” examining how water and nature informed Niedecker’s approach to story and narrative. Chang will discuss Niedecker’s ‘condensery’ style, reading the spareness of her poems not as absence, but as a new kind of presence.
Talk in Kray Hall with a reception to follow in the Viscusi Reading Room. This event is presented with generous support from the Battery Park City Authority.
Events at Poets House are popular, and seating is first-come, first-seated. We have several seats reserved for people with access needs. If events reach capacity, seating will be available in an overflow viewing room.
About the Poets:
Victoria Chang’s latest book of poems, With My Back to the World, was published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair Books in the U.K., and received the Forward Prize for Best Collection of Poetry, was named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, Lithub, and Electric Literature. Her most recent book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything, was published by Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books in the U.K. in 2022, and was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by the New Yorker and The Guardian. She serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and as the Director of Poetry@Tech. Her poems have been translated into many languages including Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Romanian, Greek, and Dutch. Photo by Pat Cray.
Lorine Niedecker was born in 1903 on Blackhawk Island near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. During her lifetime, Lorine saw only four books of poetry published: New Goose; My Friend Tree; North Central; and T&G; though she published frequently in literary magazines, most significantly in Cid Corman’s Origin. Between the years 1963 and her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1970, she expanded as a poet, writing longer poems like “Wintergreen Ridge” and the haunting, autobiographical “Paean to Place.” Admired by her poetic peers, Lorine Niedecker’s reputation as a major twentieth-century poet has expanded since her death with the publication of her collected works and two editions of correspondence.