| 3/17/2009 10:39:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Public radio show, new film focusing on Niedecker
The late Blackhawk Island poet Lorine Niedecker is the topic of both a public radio talk show and a full-length film about her life.
On Thursday, March 19, from 3 to 4 p.m., Wisconsin Public Radio host Jean Feraca will broadcast a show about Niedecker and her poetry.
"Here On Earth with Jean Feraca" is broadcast on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio. Persons residing in the WPR listening range may find the nearest station at www.wpr.org/ideas (scroll down for the listener map).
The program airs Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. and then is rebroadcast Monday through Thursday from 8 to 9 p.m.
To listen live on the Internet, go to http://www.hereonearth.org/ and then click on the link called "Listen to 'Here on Earth' on Real Player."
To join the conversation, call 1-800-642-1234 or send an e-mail to hereonearth@wpr.org.
Meanwhile, there is a Madison screening scheduled for Cathy Cook's 2008 film, "Immortal Cupboard: In Search of Lorine Niedecker."
It will take place Saturday, April 4, at 6:30 p.m. at the Wisconsin Film Festival, where the film has received a jury award. It will be shown at the Chazen Museum, 800 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706.
To purchase tickets, go to http://www.wifilmfest.org/.
In "Immortal Cupboard," Cook turns to Niedecker's own words to convey some aspect of the poet's impressive mind.
Taking cues from Niedecker's work, filmmaker Cook combines original live-action footage, animation, archival images and the poet's only audio interview to unfurl Niedecker's psychological and physical landscape. Through a repetition of images, text and sounds that mirror Niedecker's own processes and forms, Cook gives new voice and visibility to the extraordinary works of this very private poet. She brings new life to Niedecker's ruminations on nature, ecology, gender, domesticity, work, culture, family, and social politics.
A Wisconsin native herself, Cook moved to Baltimore about three years ago to become an associate professor of film/video at University of Maryland-Baltimore County, after a healthy career in film/TV production in New York. In 2001, she was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Her media works are in the permanent collections of the Donnell Library (NYC), Princeton University, National Library of Australia (Canberra), and the NYU Film Library, among others.
Cook's film about Niedecker has received acclaim.
Bret McCabe of the Baltimore City Paper online edition wrote of Niedecker, "Her poetry is a minimal monument to this area, capturing nature and seasons with an observant eye and breathless precision. Her work is impressive for how much she conveys with so few words, her stark choices so descriptively appropriate. It's a gift that extended to her prodigious letter writing, as evidenced in a short snippet that describes a letter that gives this impressionistic documentary its name."
According to Cook, Cid Corman, Niedecker's mentor, had sent the poet a little book called "For Instance." Her response was, 'You have sent me this precious book. You are now part of my immortal cupboard."
"Every writer maintains a mental reservoir that houses such precious things, but few can summon such a perfect receptacle of what has shaped your emotional and intellectual life as those two words," wrote McCabe. "This passage is but one anecdote in the documentary, during which time Cook includes images of bookshelves and a label being made that reads immortal cupboard to identify the shelves. It's a brief glimpse into Niedecker's mental world that Cook chooses to dramatize obliquely, a strategy that powers this refreshingly different version of a biopic."
Cook's interest in Niedecker reportedly began when a friend gave her a copy of a Corman-edited anthology of Niedecker poetry called "The Granite Pail."
"I got this book of poetry, and I didn't put it down," Cook recalled.
"I shared so much of what she was writing about. My life or my observations as an artist seemed to parallel what she was observing, and my interests paralleled hers, and it was about how she observed things."
Cook initially had envisioned a short film using Niedecker's poetry as a guiding inspiration.
"I thought I was making a half-hour film," Cook said. "And I responded to her work and I kept responding to it and responding to it. And then I started putting in an actress. And then I started putting in poetry. And then I started putting in some stories. And then I said, 'Well, I might as well go all the way and try to combine all three of those things together.'
"So it's not necessarily a documentary, not necessarily a biography, not necessarily a total response experimental film, but a combination of all."
Cook's "Immortal Cupboard" conveys Niedecker's life in a collage of footage -pieces of reenactments, Wisconsin animals and fauna, scenes of manual clotheswashing, archival photos, some modest animation, stills that feature Niedecker's poetry - and sound sources, from nature recordings to interviews Cook conducted with the people who knew Niedecker, and even Niedecker herself in a rare interview that Corman conducted with her shortly before she died in 1970.
"I just felt that this woman is so fascinating," Cook said. "It was a matter of passion. It wasn't even logical; if it were logical, I wouldn't have done it. It was just pure passion."
Cook said she first encountered "The Granite Pail" six-and-a-half years ago, "and I've been working on the film ever since."
Lorine Niedecker has been called the "Emily Dickinson of the 20th century," as well as "the most interesting woman poet America has yet produced." Yet, it wasn't until years after her death in 1970 that her literary talents gained public acclaim.
Born on Blackhawk Island west of Fort Atkinson, where she spent most of her life, Niedecker was a former Daily Union proofreader who wrote extensively about the area's flora and fauna, her neighbors, family and travel. She worked closely with her early mentor, Louis Zukofsky, founder of the Objectivist Movement, and was concerned with two issues: capturing the simple rhythms of American speech and the complexity implicit in life's simplicity.
Five volumes of her poetry were published before her death, and since then, her reputation and influence in the literary world have continued to grow.
Yet, Niedecker did not truly make her mark back in Fort Atkinson until the Wisconsin State Historical Society erected an historical marker at the site of her Blackhawk Island home. Around that same time, the Dwight Foster Public Library created a permanent collection of the local poet's works.
Today, the Hoard Historical Museum houses that library in its Niedecker room.
It is named "Paean to Place," the title of one of the poet's most acclaimed pieces.
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