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.