Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Chair.” Part 4 of 6

ROCKING THE BUTTONS BOX

THE BOOK ..........................-           TENDER BUTTONS

THE SUBBOOK ...................-           OBJECTS

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           A CHAIR: NUMBER 18

STANZAS..............................-           9

WORD COUNT......................-           256

THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET

CO-LLABORATORS..............-           MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

GENRE..................................-           VIRTUAL OPERA

LOCATION............................-           USA, UK, Australia, Philippines, S. Africa, Canada.

TIME......................................-           ALL HOURS OF EARTH’S CLOCK

TONE.....................................-           CLANDESTINE & MOURNFUL

A CHAIR.

A widow in a wise veil and more garments shows that shadows are even. It addresses no more, it shadows the stage and learning. A regular arrangement, the severest and the most preserved is that which has the arrangement not more than always authorised.

A suitable establishment, well housed, practical, patient and staring, a suitable bedding, very suitable and not more particularly than complaining, anything suitable is so necessary.

A fact is that when the direction is just like that, no more, longer, sudden and at the same time not any sofa, the main action is that without a blaming there is no custody.

Practice measurement, practice the sign that means that really means a necessary betrayal, in showing that there is wearing.

Hope, what is a spectacle, a spectacle is the resemblance between the circular side place and nothing else, nothing else.

To choose it is ended, it is actual and more than that it has it certainly has the same treat, and a seat all that is practiced and more easily much more easily ordinarily.

Pick a barn, a whole barn, and bend more slender accents than have ever been necessary, shine in the darkness necessarily.

Actually not aching, actually not aching, a stubborn bloom is so artificial and even more than that, it is a spectacle, it is a binding accident, it is animosity and accentuation.

Dear Reader, lots of choosing and picking in this set of stanzas. Sitting may be limited.

STANZA 6: CHOOSING THE SEAT OF POWER

To choose it is ended, it is actual and more than that it has it certainly has the same treat, and a seat all that is practiced and more easily much more easily ordinarily. 

After some dawdling and some brilliant flashes on what “A Chair.” might  offer, Allan Keeton sharpened up for stanza 6 with these scripted lines:

“Karren [a.k.a. the Steiny Road Poet] already noticed the rocking rhythm of this stanza.

What chair is a treat & has a seat that need practicing?

It reminds me of a rocking chair.

“Earlier Beeb [Barbara Crary] posted a picture of the rocking chair Abraham Lincoln was seated in when he was assassinated. 

“That seat of power, his presidency, was was ended.

That end was chosen, it was actual, it was practiced.

Ordinarily it is much easier to shoot someone other

than the president.

“Why then treat? Treatment?

“Backing off from Lincoln's death.

Seat still calls to the seat of power & ordinariness to the common people.

The two combined give democracy, which is certainly a treat if it is

actually practiced. It needs practicing, to become easy & ordinary.

“When America chose democracy it ended the hereditary seat of power.

“Still what is the treat?

Is this the monarchy?

“Treat --> retreat?”

Then calling for help because he said, “There is more here than I am seeing,” Eleanor Smagarinsky answered:

“While I'm reluctant to take anything away from Lincoln. One might, if one was so inclined, read this entire stanza as an exploration of the female art of self-pleasure. Or not. Personal preference, I suppose.”

T. De Los Reyes jumped in asking,

“What if we read it as ‘To choose / it is ended.’ Make ‘To choose’ the subject of this whole stanza (To choose = it) and then that would mean that:

•    it is ended

•    it is actual

•    it is more than that

•    it has

•    it certain has the same treat

•    it is a seat

•    it is all that is practiced

•    it is more easily

•    it is much more easily ordinarily

To choose then, to make a choice, means having an end? From the dictionary: an end, meaning in a temporal, spatial, or quantitative sense; either spatial or metaphorical—

“What do they choose? Each other? Gertrude chooses Alice, Alice chooses Gertrude, and this choice means an end. To what? To looking for someone else, because you have already found the one you'll spend the rest of your life with? To choose means an actual, existing relationship, regardless of what society says. To choose is more than just entering a relationship, it is an 'I do', a marriage? And of course it is definitely a treat, being with each other.”

STANZA 7: PICKING A WHOLE BARN

Pick a barn, a whole barn, and bend more slender accents than have ever been necessary, shine in the darkness necessarily.

Ellen Dillon found stanza 7 poetically beautiful:

“I've always wanted to pick a whole barn, and the 'bend more slender accents than have ever been necessary' puts me in mind of 'These accents seem their own defense' from 'Some Trees' - I hear robust rural tones being torqued to a more educated enunciation. 

“'shine in the darkness necessarily' might be my favourite line from all the buttons. I'm not sure what sort of necessary light or phosphorescence is emitted by a barn being twisted in the name of genteel elocution, but I will ponder on it...”

What Ellen came up with was a quote from Nietzsche on 'amor fati', the love of fate: “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.” She further explained,

“So, is this picking of a barn the making beautiful of a necessary thing, through the bending of more slender accents then are generally brought to bear on its agricultural bulk? It wasn't amor fati the love of fate itself that I had in mind here—it was the idea of seeing (choosing to see) what is beautiful in a functional object. Nietzsche talks about 'what is necessary in things' as a source of their beauty, and I heard an echo of this in the line 'shine in the darkness necessarily'— what is necessary in the object giving it radiance.

“I read the imperative 'Pick' as directed at herself, exhorting herself to 'see as beautiful what is necessary in things' thereby making her 'one of those who makes things beautiful.'”

Steiny had remarked in the context of the Lincoln assassination that this barn could be the one behind Dr. Mudd’s home where John Wilkes Booth hid until he was discovered and killed. Though he said he was “achingly mirroring Eleanor,” Steiny’s remark lit Allan’s creative juices as follows:

To choose it is ended.

To choose it is sended.

to choose it is scented.

it is a binding accident,

it is animosity and accentuation. 

Practice measurement, practice the sign that means that really means a necessary betrayal, 

scented

accident

accentuation

practice

Finally, Steiny had this thought about barn and shine in the dark—could Stein be playing with the time she met Albert Barnes? He was introduced to 27 rue de Fleurus by a man who would come into 27’s salon and light a match to see the art hanging on the walls. This dimension ups the ante on one cubist aspect—the domestic dispute between Gertrude and Leo—of “A Chair.”.

Stanzas 6 and 7 raise questions about the order of daily living with words like actual, same, practiced, ordinarily, barn, necessary, necessarily. However, these activities of selecting and singling out seem to come in the context of something bigger—phrases like it is ended, a whole barn, and shine in the dark point to maybe death and the scope of life.