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This is a note to readers of Niedecker, particularly those who use the early printings of the Collected Works published by University of California Press in 2002.

A prefatory digression: in 1992, The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas published my account of the Lorine Niedecker holdings in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. I titled the essay “‘The Very Variant’: Lorine Niedecker’s Manuscript Collection,” meaning to echo her line “the very veery” in the poem that begins, “We are what the seas” (240) and to re-echo Niedecker’s play on Stein’s “The Very Valentine” — the precise, the singled out, the necessary, the insisted upon, etc.

Fascinating indeed. My own guess — (I guess we’re all guessing) — is that Gertrude, a political naïf capable of only rough calculation re: nuance in current (’39, ’40, ’41 etc) winds of doctrine, and with very genuine affection for Fay — a very affable  gentleman indeed, (if you remember our brief meeting with him in Paris), and his returned affection for her, his persuasion to do a friend a favor and say nice things — stretching conscience no more than her willingness would permit — to help his dear friend by translating speeches that might show him in his best light for Americans (faced with defeat and Nazi military invasion, Petain was, after all, saying nice things to shore up his nation’s continuing pride in itself even in a time of terrible adversity), and not until the reality of the Occupation, the deportations, the clouds of war, and its meaning for her, given her lifelong American at-one-ness did she lose enthusiasm and feel distaste for the task and took occasion to let the obligation sort of fade away.