A Woman with Several Lives

From one of America’s finest experimental poets, this translation of a contemplation of the life of Lorine Niedecker, a stellar American poet of the mid-twentieth century. This work stands as a monument to the important conversation between French and American experimental poets.

All the children are swaddled

as white
as
dried beans
sheltered from the air

for time
even recycles
pots
of jam

Indian graves
at lake
Koshkonong

and upon this memory

a ball rolls
up to the sacred
excavations.

The golfers
play
among the corpses.

Jean Daive is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry and seven works of fiction. He lives in Paris, France.