New Goose

Rating:
Summary: Lorine Niedecker's first book, revisited
Review: "Poetry is the folktales of the mind." --Lorine Niedecker

"Ah, the cottage industry for Lorine Niedecker marches onward. Just in is Lorine Niedecker's infamous NEW GOOSE (Rumor Books, Berkeley): there must be something in the Berkeley drinking water because for over 35 years everything I've received from there has that certain edge of sparkle and completeness; and most recently just plain beautiful jobs. This NEW GOOSE is so fine looking that I stood it up as a showcase in our little bookshop. But then there is no one out here visiting in the woods at our on-line shop but I like it each time I walk in the door. Sidewalk booksellers should display this book at the front counter. Tip-top Niedecker scholar Jenny Penberthy sings its graces in a brief introduction describing the 86 poems collected herein survived from Niedecker's 1935-1945 "Mother Goose influenced" period which should be halfway taken seriously from the nursery lore to the poet's own axiom: Poetry is the folktales of the mind: so be prepared to be taken to pasture with one of the more electric minds of twentieth century poetry. An absolute must for any poetry library." (Bob Arnold)

This beautiful little 100-page volume (with a four-color cover collage by artist Amy Trachtenberg) is an alternative presentation of Lorine Niedecker's striking, original early work, edited by Jenny Penberthy. NEW GOOSE was Niedecker's first book -- but this volume includes all the New Goose poems Niedecker wrote. Jenny Penberthy, editor of Niedecker's COLLECTED WORKS (UC Press, 2002), writes in her editor's note to NEW GOOSE: "This book collects the 86 poems that survive from Lorine Niedecker's Mother Goose-influenced period-1935 to 1945. . . . The NEW GOOSE poems share the anti-authoritarian, subversive bent of their models, reflecting on the politics and economics of the time-- the Depression, free market economics, socialism, and war. . . . 'I am close to Tristan Tzara' she told Ezra Pound in 1934. In the spirit of proximity to Tzara, the nursery rhyme, and Niedecker's own anti-hierarchic practice, I have organized this collection as an alphabet book." The first book in the new series Rumor Books, from Listening Chamber, in Berkeley --handsome small editions of fugitive, hard-to-come-by, or yet-to-appear works from the century just passed: books rumored to exist.