JACK IN THE BUTTONS BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
EYE GLASSES: NUMBER 26
WORD
COUNT......................- 15
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
A CUTLET: NUMBER 27
WORD
COUNT......................- 7
STANZAS..............................-
1 each
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.....................................-
COCKY
“…another
word for eye glasses is spectacles.
People often make a spectacle of themselves when they frequent saloons.”
Tamboura Gaskins
“…violence seems to be part of these UN-still lives.” The
Steiny Road Poet
EYE GLASSES.
A color in shaving, a saloon is well
placed in the centre of an alley.
A CUTLET.
A blind agitation is manly and
uttermost.
What The Button Collective
is learning from the SloPo reading of Tender
Buttons is that the subpoems of Section 1 “Objects” have physical (of the
body) and mental (of the playful mind) planes of associations. The Steiny Road
Poet uses the word associations
because meaning is not always the
exact result of Tender Buttons
Massive Open Online Study Group’s efforts. Besides the physical and mental
planes, Stein also, but not always (or at least this is harder to detect),
ventures into a metaphysical plane. Metaphysics opens up questions of being and
knowing, what is the nature of reality, like what is the external world made of
and who or what made that world.
HAIR RAISING—SHAVING &
BLOOD
As the discussion
opened on these two very short subpoems that between them count only 22 words
exclusive of the titles, Tamboura made her comment about spectacles (above) and
Claudia Schumann noted A color in shaving is
blood and could not this blood some how point to menses, a woman’s monthly flow
of blood? While Steiny noted words like shaving and saloon and, of course, manly that seed the two subpoems with
masculinity, she also thought there is something more about the woman's
body. Maybe the saloon stands for the
opportunity of sexual contact for the male with ladies of ill repute who
frequent a saloon?
Eleanor
Smagarinsky and Mary Armour picked up the whiff of the female body to talk
about “Hair removal...a loaded topic,” mused Eleanor. “I'm thinking of Alice's
prominent moustache, the pressure on women to be hairless, and the comparison
between the seeing of the first poem and the blindness of the next poem.”
“Prominent
moustache, Eleanor?” Mary didn’t hold back:
“Fabulous
tickly unwaxed glorious hirsute curly kissable, etc. I like women with
moustaches and plenty of body hair, who doesn't?
“I had a friend
who used to wax off her upper lip growth once a month and she
would apply the hot wax, let it dry as she stayed at home baking
and then only rip it off when the doorbell rang. She would stand in the open
doorway howling with pain, her eyes filled with tears, a very red upper
lip and a little waxy centipede in one hand.
“Disconcerting.”
BOWLED OVER IN
THE HEAT
Later Dave
Green said, referring to Tamboura Gaskins’ unabashed open talk about the
possible sexual nature of the subpoem “A
New Cup and Saucer.”:
“Tamboura
taught me that my interpretations are too innocent. So allow me to essay a
Tambourian interpretation here and please brace yourself.
“The
poem is about the pelvic area of Gertrude's lover Alice. In the center of that
area lies Gertrude's ‘saloon,’ the place where she gets drunk sexually. Why
‘Eyeglasses’? Well, eyeglasses are worn on a face so maybe that is saying
something about Gertrude's position during lovemaking vis-a-vis the subject of
the poem.
“How'd
I do, Tamboura?”
“Excellent,
Dave. I am with you all the way,” answered Tamboura and added onto to the
subject of bowling alleys that Judy Meibach had raised:
“Let me riff
a bit on this—alley = bowling alley, bowling lane with the vagina shape like a
ten-pin setup; saloon = a place to get a drink as well as a place where men go
to have a good time.
“A color in shaving ==> shaving cream ==> semen
“saloon ==>
a man's pelvic area, sal = the penis connected to oo
= the balls which are slightly behind.
“Here, GS is
juxtaposing male genitalia with female genitalia as they would be positioned
during the sex act—a saloon, the penis, is well placed in the center of the
alley, the vagina. And when the placement is right, there is color in
shaving...there is semen.”
As stated in
the masthead of this blogpost, the TB MOOSG is on a world clock so one morning
Steiny woke up to this exchange and exclaimed:
“I'm
waking up to 52 degrees Fahrenheit here in Washington DC but after steeping in
all these readings of steam creamy sex, it feels like 102. Go Gtrude! Belly up
to A bar. Drink A nectar. Get shit-faced drunk. Zing zing bingo!
“Now let
me look into that innocent cutlet which could be a slab of meet—I mean
meat or...
“Ok see
there--the meaning about croquette—coquette. Yes!? The cutlet is clearly Alice.
cut·let
(ktlt) n.
1. A thin slice of meat, usually veal or
lamb, cut from the leg or ribs.
2. A patty of chopped meat or fish,
usually coated with bread crumbs and fried; a flat croquette.
[French
côtelette, from Old French costelette, diminutive of coste, rib, from Latin
costa; see kost- in Indo-European roots.]
While Sarah
Maitland Parks alluded to “all sorts of sexual connotations,” she saw a cutlet
as “A cocktail being shaken before dinner.”
Left
wondering whether a cocktail named “A Cutlet” was made with absinthe, Steiny
retreated to an online dictionary to discover that among the definitions for
saloon was “4. Chiefly British A
sedan automobile.” Yes, indeed, Steiny could see that British sedan well placed in the centre of an alley. [The saloon sedan is stretch
beyond the time Stein wrote Tender
Buttons and most likely didn’t appear until the mid 1920’s.]
GLASSES,
LASSES, ASSES
In a spate of
radical rewriting, Sarah rewrote “Eye Glasses.”:
“I thought
that without glasses on, all I could see in the mirror is coloured blurriness.
Similarly, without glasses on, an alley might look well-appointed and
welcoming, instead of cold, dank and dirty.
“I also
thought that the sentence lent itself to being rewritten:
“A skill in
shaving, a razor is well placed in the centre of a cheek.
A color in
painting, a dab is well placed in the centre of an eye.
“All the
words could be different, yet keep the nouns and verbs where they are. Or just
the syllable counts for each word could be kept, or just the first letter of
each word.
“There is
something about the rhythm of the original sentence which appeals to me.”
Peter Treanor
came online with:
“Well
you can see from (eye) glasses, lasses and asses in the title [‘Eye Glasses.’].
“Maybe
the saloon is a bar, a place or a room with a suggestion of sexual availability
and freedom, a sexual spectacle. A spectacular spectacle.
“And
the OO in saloon, well that looks like a pair of specs and a pair of breasts or
a nice big bottom. And well placed in the centre of an alley lies anal
ley, an anal lay or anally perhaps. My gaydar doth flash. There is
color in shaving such an establishment nearby and a masculinity in
shaving (and having), unless you think of shaving legs that is more the
preserve of the feminine. And a saloon (a room) at the centre of an alley, that alley could be seen as two legs (smooth and shaven) and the saloon at
their centre (and up at the top) is a spectacle (eye glass) to behold. OO er!
“And those
double l's in well and alley look like a pair of legs too!
ABOUT THAT
ALLEY
Alley
noun (plural alleys)
3.
a
narrow passageway between
or behind buildings: he took a short cut along an alley there were a few
muggings in the backstreets and alleys
4.
a path lined with trees, bushes, or stones: alleys
of standing stones
5.
[with modifier] a long, narrow area in which
games such as skittles and bowling are played: a skittle alley
6.
Tennis, North American either
of the two side strips between the singles sideline and the sidelines which
count as part of the court in a doubles match.
7.
Baseball the area between the outfielders
in left-centre or right-centre field.
“So Alley is a narrow bushy passageway or path, what
can she [Stein] be thinking of?”
Without
directly answering Peter’s question, Steiny added another set of definitions
for alley:
“In the Free
DICtionary, we also get this for alley”:
al·ley 1 (l)
n.
pl. al·leys
1. A
narrow street or passageway between or behind city buildings.
2. A path between flower beds or trees in a garden or park.
3. Sports
a. A
straight narrow course or track, especially a bowling alley.
b. Either
of the parallel lanes at the sides of a tennis court,
which widen the inbounds area for doubles play.
Idiom:
up (one's) alley Informal
Compatible with one's interests or qualifications: an
assignment that is right up your alley.
[Middle English alei, from Old French alee, from aler, to
walk, from Latin ambulre; see ambulate.]”
Then Steiny
said, “Alice is Gtrude's flower garden, no?”
|
However,
Eleanor had moved her reality to a ballpark, a place we Buttons had been before
in other TB subpoems.
“Considering
the previous baseball connections we made, I lOOked a bit further into that
allusion (5th in Peter's list of definitions, above):
“alley
“Also gap or power alley, the
space between the leftfielder and the centerfielder, or the rightfielder and
centerfielder. If a batter hits the ball up
the alley with enough force, he has a stronger chance of advancing beyond
first base and being credited with an extra-base hit. Typically, this is an
appropriate term for describing a line drive or ground ball; fly balls that hit
the wall are not normally described this way.”
Dave
retreating to word play offered: "’Alley’ = ‘all eyes’ or ‘Ali’ as short
for ‘Alice’?”
Peter
connecting a few dots answered, “There seems to be a lot of eye (I) and Ali,
together like oo at the centre of saloon. oo could look like two heads, kissing
maybe? Now weren’t they together like vv in the last poem [how W is formed from
two V’s]? Is she going through the alphabet trying to pair them up in letters
as much as she can? A marriage of letters?”
MONSIEUR, DO
YOU GO?
Allan Keeton
offered, ruminating on the French word for (aller), something Claudia had
brought up earlier—we Buttons have a habit relay teamwork:
“I think
that Vous allez? Do you go?
is French
slang for are you gay?
“I think
this, because I was in a guitar store in Montreal once & on my way out a
guy said Vous allez?
“I thought
he was asking if I was leaving, so I said oui
& left,
but I noticed
an odd & lascivious look on his face as I did so.”
BENDING EL
BEAU
Meanwhile
Eleanor had broken apart the word elbow
and had set out the definition of bow
with some commentary on el:
BOW
1a knot
tied with two loops and two loose ends.
2a
weapon for shooting arrows, typically made of a curved piece of wood joined at
both ends by a taut string.
3a
long, partially curved rod with horsehair stretched along its length, used for
playing the violin and other stringed instruments.
4a
curved stroke forming part of a letter (e.g. b, p).
5a
metal ring forming the handle of a key or pair of scissors.
• North American a sidepiece or lens frame of a
pair of glasses.
“I was
surprised by a couple of those definitions (I highlighted them).
Also, of
course—there's the bow you do, when you meet royalty or for a curtain call. And
the bow of a ship.
“I suppose
the EL brings to mind the Spanish ‘THE,’ or maybe also Arabic.”
Stepping back to admire Eleanor’s scaffolding, Peter
marveled, “El beau, the beauty. Is that a mix of
French and Spanish? The beau elect or
erect even.
Pleased,
Eleanor answered: “OMG. Yes. El beau. The male beauty elect/erect. For the
first time since we came across elbow
in "Objects.",
I feel like Stein's use of the word makes sense!!”
SHAVING THE FACE OF REALITY
And while it seems we Buttons worked exclusively on
the physical and imaginative planes (dealing with word play), “Eye Glasses.” and “A Cutlet.” opened exploration of
the outer world as well as Gertrude Stein’s inner world. Stein has said she was
a male persona, the husband in the union with Alice Toklas, and so these manly
manifestations of shaving, saloons, and blind agitation offered a challenge to
ordinary reality.
While there were many other associations that were
made in this study session that included mutton chop sideburns, the drinking of
absinthe (Green fairy, anyone?), the extremely near-sighted friend of Gertrude
and Alice—Marie Laurencin, and her boyfriend the gifted poet who promoted
cubism Guillaume Apollinaire, Steiny thinks this summary by Mary will be enough:
“Remember
that
carafe and the hurt color? I'm thinking of colorless vodka, glassy
eyes behind the monocles. The shavings of ice, the speak-easy or
saloon where everybody knows your name so long as you can find the
alley.
“Gertrude
didn't approve of drunks as I recall, she saw too many artists on absinthe. And
there was Natalie Barney's crowd misbehaving and blaming the liquor.
“Cocktail
shaker, a squirt of shaving cream, the naked pink face, the saloon [car]
right out there in the centre of the dark alley, alleycats slinking around, the
blood from a shaving cut that dries to brown crumble—I keep thinking of
Hemingway, bar-lover, promiscuous, that pumped-up fake macho, the vanity of
those who won't wear eyeglasses. Do you wear glasses in order to shave safely?”
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