ABSTRACT
In this essay, the author approaches Lorine Niedecker’s poem, Paean to Place , through the lens of topopoetics. Topopoetics works with the double meaning of topos (as “place” and, in rhetoric, as “proper form”) to explore how poems become places at the same time as they point to, or refer to, the making of place in the world. Niedecker’s poem declares itself in the title as a poem about “place.” As a “paean,” it is designed to celebrate. As the title suggests, that celebration is of place in general. At the same time, however, the poem is about a specific place in Wisconsin. The poem reflects on the narrator’s life “by water” while its sinuous form explores the liminal edge of land and water. After reflecting on the connections between the author’s own poetic explorations of place and attachment and those of Niedecker, the chapter proceeds by providing a close reading of Paean to Place, paying particular attention to the poem’s use of space and its reference to various liminal states and beings. These, in turn, are connected in the essay to the role of effort and labor in the maintenance of place—activities that feminist scholar Iris Marion Young refers to as “preservation.” This focus on preservation moves readers away from the typical and heroic focus on dwelling as building developed in the work of Martin Heidegger.
