Letter to the editor: Lorine Niedecker biographer Margot Peters will be missed

Dear Friends of the Lorine Niedecker Family, with great sadness I share the news of Margot Peters’ death Saturday, June 18, 2022

She was an ambassador for Lorine writing the biography “Lorine Niedecker, A Poet’s Life,” giving presentations, answering endless questions and supporting the Friends of Lorine Niedecker.

On June 1, 2008, Margot attended a Friends of Lorine Niedecker event at the Hoard Historical Museum. As she departed, board member Silvia Sipple suggested she write a biography of Lorine, and, she did. Margot served on the board from 2009-2018 then as Emeritus.

She was 89, breast cancer caught up with her. She will join her beloved husband Peter Jordon who died last August.

I will remember her in her garden and at her desk surrounded by books, art, fury ones and her favorite finds.

This was one of Margot’s favorite Lorine poems.

 

When Ecstasy is Inconvenient

 

Feign a great calm;

all gay transport soon ends.

Chant: who knows—

flight’s end or flight’s beginning

for the resting gull?

 

Heart, be still.

Say there is money but it rusted;

say the time of moon is not right for escape.

It’s the color in the lower sky

too broadly suffused,

or the wind in my tie.

 

Know amazedly how

often one takes his madness

into his own hands

and keeps it.

 

Ann Engelman

Fort Atkinson

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