This is a test idea:
Lorine Niedecker’s poems find an image and treat that image as an object, in the way a child treats an object — a crow’s feather, an arrowhead — as a treasure. The object is something I, the reader, can collect, savor.
For example:
Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can’t mouse in
The image is so sharp it seems like an object. I can see the tin cover. I can feel the way the cold finds holes in walls — you know, the same way it finds holes and mittens.
I am a fan of the Objectivists Poets. And there are at least a couple of readers of these notes who could give you a far better account.
Great emphasis with LN and kindred poets on the poem as an object, a thing made of words (poet = maker). The more I look at this poem, the more I see the play of sound: corn-can-cover, cover-over-hole-cold, wall-hole-cold. So much depends upon a popcorn-can cover, and on the poet's attention to it.
ReplyDeleteIf it doesn’t go without saying, I, too, love this poem.
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