SOURCE: Nichols, Martha. “‘Thoughts on Things’: a Review of The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker.” Ironwood 15, no. 1 (spring 1987): 171-81.

In the following review, Nichols praises the tone of voice, and subtle imagery that Niedecker uses in her collection of poems Granite Pail.

The girl, short with stubby legs: “sturdy,” as her Ma says. Except for the glasses, two saucers of glass, or Coke bottle bottoms—but the world ain't green when you look through em. And there's this light, the girl says, it floats on the river that's always moving. She pushes up her glasses, over and over, makes another note with a pencil stub: Dark ain't the opposite of anything.

After reading The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker, I looked through the poet's eyes at the Great Flood, the world awash with water and poetry and “dreadfully much else” (p. 21). I'd...