Ten BUTS Thru Ten COMMS: Introduction

As The Button Collective of the Massive Open Online Study Group attached to the MOOC Modern Poetry moved toward cracking open its dozenth subpoem of Gertrude Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons, the Steiny Road Poet had been lobbying for a review. Steiny suggested whipping up three words to describe each subpoem. That would make a satisfying omelet, blending those poems Steiny had reviewed alone with those worked on by the Collective. No one bit. Steiny suggest boiling down each subpoem to a warm egg of one word, possibly that unnamed noun Stein was pointing to. No EGGcitement.

Eleanor Smagarinsky free associating from Boutonniere comments on the life-cycle of stars moved from constellations to numbers and “decided to count the poems we've studied so far. "A Box." is number 11.”

From here she was reminded of “Who Knows One?” a song she sang every Passover as a child. “You go through the numbers 1 through 13 and each number is connected to something in Jewish life.

“Eleven is ‘the stars in Joseph's dream,’ Genesis 37: 9 Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’


“Ten are the commandments!  Did you get that K??!! [K=a.k.a. Steiny]

 “Is it possible to look at poems 1 through 10 as GS's ten commandments of the new language?!”

So Steiny, pleased to get a review started, set up the two lists of Ten and asked the Buttons to choose a matched pair of numbers:

 1-A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
 2-GLAZED GLITTER.
 3-A SUBSTANCE IN A CUSHION.
 4-A BOX.
 5-A PIECE OF COFFEE.
 6-DIRT AND NOT COPPER.
 7-NOTHING ELEGANT.
 8-MILDRED'S UMBRELLA.
 9-A METHOD OF A CLOAK.
10-A RED STAMP.

I am the LORD thy God:

1-Thou shalt have no other gods.

2-No graven images or likenesses.

3-Do not take the LORD's name in vain.

4-Remember the Sabbath day.

5-Honour thy father and thy mother.

6-Thou shalt not kill.

7-Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8-Thou shalt not steal.

9-Thou shalt not bear false witness.

10-Thou shalt not covet.

Here was the birth of the Ten Buts thru Ten Comm Project, a subproject of the Close Reading all of Tender Buttons MOOSG. For readability, each Button-Commandment discussion will be a separate blog post.

Also notice that the TB subpoems are hyperlinked (in the list above) to the original posts and the Commandments will be linked (after the fact) to the appropriate Ten Buts thru Ten Comm discussions. This effort comes from Gertrude Stein’s own direction in “A Carafe, That Is A Blind Glass.” with her line “system to pointing.”