To commemorate the centenary of Lorine Niedecker's birth, the Hoard Historical Museum and the Dwight Foster Public Library commissioned the Silver Buckle Press in Madison, WI to create a piece honoring Lorine and her work. Tracy Honn of Silver Buckle Press designed and created the piece. We have 125 of this limited edition print for sale at $25 each plus $2.00 shipping if we need to mail it to you. Silver Buckle Press is "a working museum of letterpress printing." It uses hand-set, movable type to produce limited edition publications.

To order your copy send your check and mailing address to:

Niedecker Broadside
Dwight Foster Public Library
102 E. Milwaukee Ave.
Fort Atkinson, WI 53538

Make your check payable to Friends of Lorine Niedecker.

This is Tracy's description of the piece:

Approximately 7/5 X 11 " on Twinrocker "Cripple Creek" handmade paper, letterpress printed in various sizes and styles of Times New Roman with Murray Hill and Hamilton Wood Type ornaments Routed Border No. 448, in five colors.

Some notes on the design:
"I wanted to design a simple, quiet piece where the overall presentation supported the poem and was as a whole illustrative without using illustration in its traditional sense. I had the idea of a plover in mind as I worked on this--its colors of camouflage, its use of art as it feigns injury to draw predators away from its nest, etc. I had read that Lorine Niedecker was a bird watcher and sharing that love, I tried to keep a sense of the expectancy of that experience in mind. The use of bright colors or strong contrasts didn't seem like the right approach, instead I was interested in the look of something that blended in and fit like a pair of old blue jeans. The wood type ornaments were manufactured by the Hamilton Wood Type company of Two Rivers and I like that Wisconsin connection. The wave-like repeat of the abstract border ornament seemed appropriate to the poem's images of rhythm. I chose a soft but strong handmand paper in a hard-to-describe, mottled color. The one slight flourish I allowed was using the type Murray Hill for the poet's name. This mid 20th-century type is not much smiled upon these days, but it reminds me a little of the cat's eye glasses Lorine Niedecker wears in one of her photographs. It's of her period. I had thought I would use Centaur type overall because I like its sharpness and contrasts, but I needed some type variations (an italic, for instance) that we don't have in the shop. I chose instead a very simple type face, one that doesn't draw attention to itself; a type one reads easily and is effectively invisible. (Times New Roman.)

"It's a delicate task to present a poet's words and not interfere with them; to offer a space of supportive enhancement. In the case of a poet no longer living, and for an event like this centenary, I felt even more trepidation about design considerations, since, as much as you try to make appropriate choices, the poet isn't around to object to or approve of what you do. And there may be many fierce champions of the poet who have informed reasons to object to any particular presentation. In preparation, I looked at all the publications I could get my hands on, especially ones printed during Ms. Niedecker's lifetime, and I read a great deal of her work and from secondary sources. My hope is to offer a keepsake that honors her work, and, in the case of this much reproduced passage from Paean to Place, to bring a quiet new breath, a pause of reconsideration to a splendid poem."

Tracy Honn, Silver Buckle Press