Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970) was a poet of extraordinary talent who was long enveloped in obscurity, only beginning to be appreciated when she died. Her poverty and arduous family life, the isolated home that provided rich imagery for her work, and her unusual acquaintances have all contributed to her enigmatic reputation. Margot Peters brings Lorine Niedecker's life out of the shadows in this first full biography. She depicts Niedecker's watery world on Blackhawk Island, Wisconsin, where she was born and spent most of her life. A college career cut short and an equally brief marriage were followed in 1931 by a life-changing correspondence and complicated 35 -year friendship with modernist poet Louis Zukofsky, who connected her to a literary lifeline of distant poets and magazines. Supporting herself as a hospital scrubwoman and proofreader for a dairy journal, Niedecker made a late marriage which gave her time to write and publish in her final decades. This biography reveals a poet of spare and brilliant verse and a woman whose talent and grit carried her through periods of despair.--From publisher description.