Niedecker described her work as a "condensery," and several critics have compared her style to the delicate yet concrete verse of classical Chinese poetry.
She endured real poverty which, coupled with her relative isolation from other writers and the beauty of her natural surroundings, had a notable impact on her work. Praised for its lucid imagery and spare language, her poems are "whittled clean," according to Kenneth Cox:
I've been free
with less
and clean
I plumbed for principles
Now I'm jet-bound
by faucet shower
heater valve
ring seal service
cost to my little
humming
water
bird
Niedecker's long correspondence with Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman and Basil Bunting brought her some critical notice during her lifetime, but her work was generally overlooked until late in her life.