Niedecker Lorine - Lorine Niedecker collected works

Many many thanks to him. Another friend of Niedecker's, Kenneth Cox, deserves my profound thanks. From London, Kenneth has read and made astute comments on my work for fifteen years. I depend upon his sharp eye and keen mind. This book is dedicated to him. I very much regret that Gail Roub, Niedecker's friend and champion on home ground in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, did not live to see this book.

Gail contributed generously to this and other books on Niedecker with his immediate, unhesitating supply of crucial information, documents, and photographs. He worked energetically to promote Niedecker's recognition both locally and further afield. Bonnie Roub and family continue that work today. Many thanks to them too for their support. Another Fort Atkinson resident has been essential to my study of Niedecker. Marilla Fuge, voluntary archivist of the Lorine Niedecker Collection in the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, has kept me informed of her ongoing and thorough research into the Niedecker and Kunz family histories, and indeed of all Niedecker-related events in the community.

The information she supplies me with is essential to my understanding of Niedecker's life on Black Hawk Island. Contact with Marilla is always a pleasure. Other members of the Niedecker committee in Fort Atkinson have shown me hospitality. I remember with pleasure Joan and Milo Jones, and Bill and Bobbie Starke. Karl Gartung and Ann Kingsley in Milwaukee have been warm friends and dedicated inventive promoters of Niedecker's poetry. My thanks to both of them.

Many others have helped me compile this edition. Here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Peter Quartermain deserves particular thanks for his meticulous readings of the final manuscript and for spirited encouragements along the way. For their essential contributions of various kinds, I also thank Eliot Weinberger, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Davidson, Jerry Reisman, Glenna Breslin, Jonathan Williams, Tom Meyer, Harry Gilonis, Alec Finlay, Jonathan Greene, Laura Furman, Sharon Thesen, Michele Leggott, Lisa Robertson, the late Joan Hardwick, Keith Alldritt, Linda McDaniel, David Martin, Rebecca Newth, and Capilano College. Tandy Sturgeon deserves special thanks since it was she who first persuaded the University of California Press to take on the publication of this book. We initially began the project together; after she withdrew, she generously allowed me to continue to use her dissertation disk copy of the text of the poems. Many libraries and librarians have given me access to materials and have been generous with their help.

I would like to thank Cathy Henderson, Tara Wenger, and Pat Fox at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Gene Bridwell and the late Charles Watts at the Contemporary Literature Collection, W.A.C. Bennett Library at Simon Fraser University; Rodney Phillips at the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library; the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin (Lorine Niedecker Collection); Special Collections at the Stanford University Libraries (Robert Creeley Papers); the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Yale Collection of American Literature); and the Department of Special Collections at Boston University Library (Lorine Niedecker Collection). Thanks to Clayton Eshleman, who published Next Year or I Fly My Rounds, Tempestuous in Sulfur 41 (Fall 1997): 4271. Linda Norton, my editor at the University of California Press, has been a pleasure to work with.

Her enthusiasm for Niedecker's poetry and her confidence in the importance of this book have sustained me through the years. I am also indebted to senior editor Rachel Berchten and copyeditor Kathleen MacDougall for their meticulous care in managing the production of the book. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my familymy husband, Ren, and our sons, Julian and Thomasfor graciously enduring the interruptions to family life caused by this project. J. P.