Woman with Several Lives

In this book, the author's eye attends Niedecker's world with a poet's neighborly thoughtfulness. His acts of observation become a form of devoted objectivist observance, as "the window has a religion/based entirely in localizing/the leaves of a tree." The translation beautifully captures the reflected and refracted text, the glancing of multiple meanings against the turn of the line. The process reveals the charged air of perception and equivocation within the complex architecture of the lived poem.