Third ‘Friends of Lorine Niedecker’ poetry wall planned in Fort

By Chris Spangler

Work will begin soon on a third Friends of Lorine Niedecker poetry wall in downtown Fort Atkinson.

In September, local artist Jeremy Pinc will begin painting the artwork on the north wall of the Hometown Pharmacy building, located at the corner of South Main Street and South Water Street West.

Ann Engelman, president of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker, said It would feature a short poem, similar to the first mural across the bridge to the northeast. The art will cover only the wall that already has been painted, and not any of the original cream city brick. 

“Owners John and Becky Tuttle are enthusiastically supportive, as is pharmacist John Zagelow,” Engelman said.

The color pallet will be hues reminiscent of nature, water and landscape, while the poem by the famous late Blackhawk Island poet, Lorine Niedecker, will read:

Mergansers

       fans

    on their heads

Thoughts on things

         fold unfold

above the river beds

Engelman said that the mural will be the responsibility of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker and maintained by the artist for five years ending in August 2026. 

Pinc will prepare the surface, paint and seal it on completion. 

This will mark Pinc’s third Niedecker mural in Fort Atkinson. The first one, located at the corner of North Main and East Sherman streets, was painted in 2009. That was followed 10 years later with a second across Main Street at its corner of West Sherman Avenue. Both feature excerpts from Niedecker’s poem., “Paean to Place.”

“The first two walls at the Poetry Corner have been terrific Fort Atkinson destinations, and pictures appear in Jefferson County tourism materials,” Engelman said. 

She noted that the Friends of Lorine Niedecker group received the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce’s Tourism Counts award, and the poetry walls have given the community visibility with the Wisconsin Legislature through a Lorine Niedecker Day Proclamation.

“The Friends of Lorine Niedecker have been good stewards of the walls with the support of the building owners,” Engelman noted, adding that Pinc has 12 years of experience with these projects on historical buildings. 

“Our project goals are greater awareness of Lorine Niedecker’s life and poetry, to provide a thoughtful, high-quality piece of public art and, in this day of divided thinking, to engage viewers to consider their own ‘thoughts on things above the river beds,’” Engelman said.

Born in Fort Atkinson on May 12, 1903, to Henry and Theresa “Daisy” Kunz Neidecker, Lorine Niedecker (she altered the spelling) wrote frequently about her father, a carp fisherman and tavern keeper, and mother, an obsessive homemaker whose deafness turned her inward and pushed her husband to a neighbor who comforted him until his money ran out.

Niedecker graduated from Fort Atkinson High School in 1922 and attended Beloit College the following year. She began to publish her poetry in the mid-1930s, but never was far from routine occupations. 

After two years as a library assistant at the Dwight Foster Public Library and scriptwriter at WHA in Madison, she worked as a proofreader for Hoard’s Dairyman magazine from 1944-50 and then scrubbed floors at Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital from 1957-63, just to “make a little money for the really important things,” she once said.

She lived alone in the cabin inherited from her father until her marriage in 1928 to farmer Frank Hartwig. They separated two years later, but didn’t divorce until 1942. 

In 1962, Lorine married Albert Millen, an outdoorsman-turned-building painter. She’d met the one-handed Milwaukeean when he bought a weekend cottage from her on Blackhawk Island. They lived in Milwaukee until he retired to Lake Koshkonong four years later. She quit her hospital job and became a housewife. She learned to sew and Millen taught her how to cook.

They traveled frequently — she with a notepad on her lap for her constant “scribbling” — visiting his children and enjoying the wilds of Lake Superior, Door County and the western United States. 

It was during her marriage to Millen that Niedecker doubled her lifetime output of poetry. In fact, she believed that some of her later works were among her best.

She worked closely with her early mentor, Louis Zukofsky, founder of the Objectivist Movement, and was concerned with two issues: capturing the simple rhythms of American speech and the complexity implicit in life’s simplicity. Her life also was filled with correspondence with literary greats such as Cid Corman and Jonathan Williams. She began writing not only about nature and home, but of people she admired in history, scientific discoveries and the mysteries of the universe.

On Dec. 1, 1970, Niedecker suffered a stroke and died on New Years Eve. Al Millen passed away in 1981 and is buried alongside Lorine in Union Cemetery. His gravestone reads, “Al Millen, husband of Lorine Niedecker.”

Five volumes of her poetry were published before her death, but it has been during the five decades afterward that Niedecker’s works continue to become even a greater international sensation every day.

A Wisconsin State Historical Society historical plaque is located at the site of her Blackhawk Island home, and the Dwight Foster Public Library has a permanent collection of the Lorine’s works in its Friends of Lorine Niedecker Room. The Wisconsin Poetry Festival is named in her honor, and Fort Atkinson has become a mecca for pilgrims worldwide hoping to gain more insight into her works by communing with the Rock River she so loved.

A related column on the topic is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/your-take-fort-atkinsons-poetry-walls-are-part-of-the-citys-collective-history/.