The Poetry Foundation has an essay called The Lives of Lorine Niedecker: How Important is a Poet’s Biography?. I had never heard of Niedecker before but she sounds like an interesting woman and poet, under appreciated. She lived mostly in Wisconsin and among her poems is a long and well thought of one called “Lake Superior.” I will have to investigate her work further.
What is most interesting about the article is its examination of how important biography is to understanding her poetry. While it focuses on Niedecker, I found the discussion extends well to other poets, poetry in general and even fiction. The importance of biography to understanding a creative work is one of those perennial questions that will never have a completely satisfying answer. Some say an author’s biography should never enter into understanding and interpreting her work. Other’s say an author’s biography is extremely important because, after all, everything he writes is filtered through his life’s experiences. My thoughts on the matter move around the nebulous middle of it depends.
Part of the difficulty, especially with poetry, especially with poets like Niedecker who deliberately and obviously draw from the personal — Adrienne Rich did this and Sharon Olds and countless others — is knowing where to draw the line. Niedecker didn’t believe knowing a poet’s life was necessary to understanding individual poems, but having a familiarity with her life and personal details gives a reader rewards.
Yet her biography, according to the author of the essay, is also quite possibly a hindrance to her being more well-known. Niedecker preferred to live pretty much alone in rural Wisconsin on her farm. In 1978 Mary Oppen published an autobiography and in it she takes a pot shot at Niedecker. Oppen had invited her to dinner and Niedecker, who was not familiar with New York and too shy to ask directions on the subway arrived “unforgivably late.” So Oppen describes Niedecker as a “timid small-town girl” whose “poetry emerged from a tiny life.” This opinion spread to other critics who began describing her as a “rural savant” and a “bumpkin-savant.” Damage done. And in spite of scholars and critics like Marjorie Perloff and Rachel Blau DuPlessis arguing for Niedecker’s central role in American Modernism, she remains off the radar of most people.
Completely unfair. But in spite of my feeling indignant on Niedecker’s behalf, I have to also stand among the guilty. Not when it comes to Niedecker, but when it comes to using an author’s biography against her. I have on a few occasions chosen not to read an author because of, mostly his, personal life. I suspect I am not the only one who has done this.
The essay author makes a great point. She says that while biography might not explain the work, a “full appreciation of her [Niedecker’s and one can say most creative artists] poetry acknowledges how life and work work together.” And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Biography shouldn’t loom so large that it diminishes the work, but the work is also informed by biography. Life and work are interconnected. It is silly to deny the interconnectedness. But at the same time it is also silly to comb through an author’s work trying to suss out who this character is in real life and whether that event ever actually happened. Thus I remain in the nebulous in between. It’s soft and fuzzy here. Not a bad place at all.
I am also in the nebulous middle. As a rule it might be best for a writer’s work to stand for itself, especially perhaps poetry. But there will always be a critic or biographer who really will have something to say that really adds to our understanding of the author. Example might be Richard Holme’s biography of Shelley or his brilliant study of Samuel Johnson’s relationship with the poet Richard Savage – one of the first literary biographies.
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I mean Johnson’s life of Savage!
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Ian, I suspect a good many people are in the nebulous middle. I agree that the work should stand on its own. A Reader should not be required to be best friends with the author in order to figure out what the heck is going on in the writing. But either through things the author says or through the work of a critic or biographer, if there are things in the life that illuminate the work, there is no sense in pretending they don’t exist. I really have to get around to reading Holmes, I’ve heard good things about him.
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How well we understand anyone rests in large part on what we know of their life experience. Since I am not a writer, I can only assume that at least some of that author’s “story” finds its way into almost every piece of their work. It may not always be evident, but I think it is bound to be there, somewhere. In any event, I certainly don’t think knowing an author’s history will make their writing *less* easily understood or appreciated.
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Grad, definitely a writer’s biography is bound to be in their work even if it isn’t obvious. It shouldn’t be used against them even though it sometimes is as in the case of Niedecker in the article I read. But sometimes it can illuminate the shadows for a broader understanding of a work. Though it should never be the sole point.
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Grad – that happens when readers use biography to close off interpretation. Why did that event happen in the book – because it happened in real life. Interpretive problem solved. Any cruel father in Kafka’s fiction is Kafka’s actual father.
This sort of thing was at its worst, I think, when Freudian interpretation was the rage. Critics sifted through writers’ lives looking for childhood traumas and sexual oddities, which were then poured back into the texts, sometimes leading to insights, sometimes to really bizarre conclusions.
That Shelley biography Ian mentions is fantastic. It takes Shelley entirely seriously as an artist. The book really helped me read Shelley. If you have 700 pages of time free…
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Tom, oh gak yes. All that Freudian interpretation. Sometimes such an approach might turn up something interesting but when it turns a work into therapy session and distorts the it for the sake of the analysis, no good.
I did not realize the Shelley bio was so big. I’ve heard good things about Holmes in general. Perhaps one day I will have 700 pages of free time. Seems like a worthwhile subject.
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I have, a few times, been interested in reading more about an author’s life, particularly those I have fond early memories of, like Beatrix Potter or A.A. Milne. But for the most part I prefer just to read their works and remain ignorant of their private lives. I think the writing should stand on its own and while learning more about them is certainly interesting, it shouldn’t be always necessary to appreciate what they wrote.
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Jeane, I enjoy a good literary biography but not as a means to understanding an author’s work, more because I am curious about the person who wrote the books I like so much. I do seem to end up with a broader view of the author’s work afterwards and I appreciate that. But you are right, it should not be necessary to appreciate the writing.
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I’m very often at least a little curious about an autor’s life–maybe more so with older authors whose works have faded away a little (especially if I find their work good or interesting and then am curious about how they lived) or with really popular writers whose work is considered part of the canon. I can see where a little knowledge is interesting and makes for more understanding of their work, but it becomes a problem if it stands in the way of their work, too. Either the reader is put off by how they lived or they make unfair judgements (and who among us has a perfect, blameless sort of life). Of course like Jeane says–knowing someone’s life story certainly shouldn’t be necessary to appreciate a work, too, but it does make for interesting reading…
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Danielle, I am in complete agreement. And if we only read the books of writers with perfect lives we’d have nothing to read! I don’t want to know the biography of every writer I read but I do like to read about favorite writers. I feel like it helps me know them as people but it also helps me appreciate their work even more.
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You know the whole school of Cultural Theory as well as the Poststructuralism argues that art cannot be taken independently. Even a so called “neutral observation” is not neutral since its being filtered through someone else’s lens. So I completely agree with you that it’s silly to deny that the personal will not impact the art. Unfortunately I too carry similar prejudices and have for years foresworn certain writers because of some aspect of their personal life!
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cirtnecce, oh yes, there is no such thing as the objective, right? It’s all an illusion. I totally agree with that. It does get to be a problem though when biography becomes everything. I try so hard to not let it influence me but I’ve not been able to get past it for a few writers. Norman Mailer I’m looking at you.
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I like finding out about historical readings, like how John Donne’s contemporary readers would have read his poems–they’d have had less trouble and more fun with the wit because so much of it was topical, and they’d have understood the biographical references in Songs and Sonnets (that he’d fallen in love with his patron’s daughter, for instance). Some of my dissertation work was on broadsheet satires that might not have lasted for more than a day except that occasionally one was preserved because a reader found it funny and annotated the margin or because the author (often anonymous) was well-known.
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Jeanne, oh, a very good point! I often wonder how much zooms by my understanding with older books just because of the time and culture factor. It makes a difference.
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As in the example you give about Niedecker, it’s often myths and stereotypes about the author’s life that lead to a dismissal of her work. And this is especially so with women. While I would never argue that biographical information is necessary to appreciating a writer’s art, biographies can be extremely useful in contradicting those stereotypes and giving readers a fuller view of the life and personality that led to the literary work.
Full disclosure: I am a biographer of a woman poet, Marianne Moore, whose work is often dismissed because of negative stereotypes about her life and personality.
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Linda, so sad but true that myths and stereotypes often impact the work of women most. I completely agree with you regarding biography. And how exciting about your forthcoming biography of Moore! I have several of her poetry books and will be sure to look for the biography in October (says Amazon).
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