THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
FOOD
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
Cranberries
WORD COUNT (Total)……...- 154
STANZA(S)............................-
6
THE LEADER........................- THE
STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS.............-
MODPO
STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS
“Cranberries.” is the fifth
subpoem of Tender Buttons section 2
Food. Dominating the conversation among the Buttons Collective was how sonic
these stanzas are. Major themes explored in this discussion were: the American
holiday of Thanksgiving, settlers coming to America, racial issues, the
seasonal transformation of fall (fall colors), visual art, song (sea shanties,
nursery rhymes), and word play. This discussion is followed by some meaty
afterthoughts.
CRANBERRIES.
Could
there not be a sudden date, could there not be in the present settlement of old
age pensions, could there not be by a witness, could there be.
Count the
chain, cut the grass, silence the noon and murder flies. See the basting, undip
the chart, see the way the kinds are best seen from the rest, from that and
untidy.
Cut the
whole space into twenty four spaces and then and then is there a yellow color,
there is but it is smelled, it is then put where it is and nothing stolen.
A remarkable
degree of red means that, a remarkable exchange is made.
Climbing
all together in when there is a solid chance of soiling no more than a dirty
thing, coloring all of it in steadying is jelly.
Just as it
is suffering, just as it is succeeded, just as it is moist so is there no
countering.
“When I hear GS read aloud or read
her lines or phrases or words aloud, they make sense without making sense.
The rhythms make sense. Sound is important in Stein as is an inherent musicality.”
Mary Armour
THE LINK
BETWEEN SUGAR & CRANBERRIES
Teri Rife began the
discussion by seeing the word chain
as a connection between “Sugar.” and “Cranberries.”.
“Isn't it
interesting to see that nice old chain from ‘Sugar.’ widening
right into ‘Cranberries.’?
A nice link from one subpoem to the next. And, after all, the nice
old chain in ‘Sugar.’ was absent, laid by—because it was in ‘Cranberries.’?
A nice old chain is widening, it is absent, it is
laid by. [stanza 18, “Sugar.”]
Karren Alenier thought this was an excellent point and asked if Rife saw there is
sauce in ‘Sugar.’.
A separation
is not tightly in worsted and sauce,
it is so kept well and sectionally. [stanza 5, “Sugar.”]
Rife
answered:
“Oh,
yes...sauce there and jelly here. And we're basting, too. Very Thanksgiving-y.”
THE BEGINNING
OF THANKSGIVING
Based on
stanza 1, the conversation turned to the American food holiday with Alenier responding:
Could
there not be a sudden date, could there not be in the present settlement of old
age pensions, could there not be by a witness, could there be.
“That sudden
date could be the
creation of Thanksgiving, a real thanks giving because they were starving in
the cold weather in that settlement,
maybe hoping to just make it to old
age, no? Maybe hoping to be a witness
in history. At which point we change from could there not be to could there be—affirming life.”
Then Alenier asked:
“Did
you know cranberries, blueberries, and concord grapes are the only native
fruits to America?”
ESSENTIAL
AMERICANNESS
Rife said she didn’t know
and Mary Armour launched into a
meditation “that essential ‘Americanness’” in Gertrude Stein:
“A remarkable degree of red leaps out at me. Cranberries vivid in jelly or sauce?
“Thinking of
the sea, I feel as if reiterations and assonance are how Stein lets herself
down into a poem, as if looking around her domesticity and enumerating,
echoing, sliding from one syllable to the next.
“Karren and
Teri, we've talked before about that essential 'Americanness' in Gertrude
Stein, her awareness of all that is good, bad, patriarchal, wholesome,
restrictive about being American, about writing America down in Paris.
“And it
isn't a stretch then to think of the 'remarkable exchange' that is
Thanksgiving, the gift of a turkey, the celebrating of not family but
Gertrude's own kin (not her brother, not American Fathers) but Gertrude and
Alice as Americans abroad.”
SEA SONGS
& LINK TO THE SEA
Alenier remarked:
“Mary, maybe
her stream of vocalization is akin to singing sea chanteys. The red akin to the
sailor's ruddiness.”
Alenier then saw a big topic forming relative
to cranberries evoking things American:
“It occurs
to me after thinking about the cranberry connection to America and the emphasis
that Mary gives to that essential 'Americanness' in Gertrude Stein that
the entire set of stanzas points to European settlement of the United States.
I’m going to post these stanza explications separately to see if anyone wants
to add to what I am saying.
“I already
discussed Stanza 1 with its pointing to history (date, old age, witness) but also grounded in the here
and now (present settlement).”
In stanza 2,
Alenier sees settlers sailing to
America.
“Stanza 2
opens with what sounds like a sea chantey (shanty) a song— Count the chain,
cut the grass, silence the noon and murder flies. Words like chain, undip,
chart make me think of the sea—anchor chain, dip—referring maybe to a
wave in the sea, chart—the way of navigating either by the sea markers or the
stars.
“I see this
stanza as the way the settlers get to America. They take inventory of the chain
(both the anchor’s chain and the things that chain them to Europe) so then they
must baste (wet the path) undip the chart (get things stable
without waves). But it is hard trip and there is an onslaught of vermin like
flies that assail them. In the brightest light (noon) they must quiet (silence)
those who would stop them and cut ties with the land (cut the grass)
where they hail from.”
SHEEP DIP
Rife replied with an association to “Mutton.”:
“I can't
help but think about sheep dip, too. The sheep cut the grass and the dip
murders blow-flies. Back to ‘Mutton.’.
PAINTING
DIVIDED INTO 24 SPACES
In stanza 3,
Alenier simultaneously sees a
connection to a painting under construction and the King of England dividing up
land in America.
“Stanza 3 Cut
the whole space into twenty four spaces and then and then is there a yellow
color, there is but it is smelled, it is then put where it is and nothing
stolen refers to the land of America. I’m not sure why she specifically
points to 24 spaces but I see it as painting of the land divided into pieces,
something like what the King of England did in parceling out acreage to his
loyal followers. The people receiving the land smelled it out, scoped it out,
and then legally took possession (nothing stolen).”
NURSERY
RHYME CONNECTION TO STANZA
Here, Rife
got excited, referring both to stanzas 2 and 3:
“Whoa—check
out another song to go along with that sea shanty. From Wikipedia”:
The rhyme's origins are uncertain.
References have been inferred in Shakespeare's Twelfth
Night (c. 1602), (Act II, Scene
iii), where Sir Toby Belch tells a clown: "Come on; there is sixpence for
you: let's have a song" and in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Bonduca(1614), which contains the line "Whoa, here's a stir
now! Sing a song o' sixpence![1]
“A common
modern version is”:
Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the
pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish, To set
before the king? The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money; The queen was in the
parlour, Eating bread and honey. The maid was in the garden, Hanging out the
clothes, When down came a blackbird And pecked off her nose.[1]
“Related to
the final stanza, too?
Just as
it is suffering, just as it is succeeded, just as it is moist so is there no
countering.
That pie is
successful (entertaining) but those poor birds are no doubt, suffering.”
TREATISE ON SOUND
Armour jumped in to reinforce the aural
nature of these stanzas:
“Teri,
Karren, this opens up such a 'fruitful' line of thought!
“When I hear
GS read aloud or read her lines or phrases or words aloud, they make sense
without making sense. The rhythms make sense. Sound is important in Stein as is
an inherent musicality. I was thinking last night about how she composed her
piece on Picasso/Napoleon while walking on a beach listening to the waves
breaking on the shore. And how she was fascinated with her dog Basket lapping
water from his bowl. This again is that self-soothing hypnagogic side of GS—the
same way she enters an altered state through murmuring words or words as
sounds, or that insistent repetitive mimicking of lovemaking, just
following the sensual sounds and rhythms into sleep or ecstasy.
Alenier rejoined:
“Mary, I
love your description of the daily rhythmic sounds Stein might have heard and
add this one—Baltimore streets had those sounds from vendors of fruit &
veggies and services like scissor sharpening. Even as a child living in
Baltimore, I heard a man calling rhythmically watermelon. He was riding a horse-drawn wagon. Last summer at the
Smithsonian Folk Festival, I was brought back in touch with that because they
had some family members of those street members at the festival.
TURKEY DAY
Returning to
the subject of Thanksgiving, Rife
said stanza 3 spoke also to the Thanksgiving holiday:
“The
whole space of a Thanksgiving day is cut into twenty four spaces
(hours), no more, no less. Time is what and where it is and can't be stolen. Now, this is stretching
it, but during some of those hours, the yellow
(bird) will be smelled and when done,
cooking will be put where it is (at
noon, when everyone will fall silent for a moment to admire it?)”
Praising
Rife, Alenier added:
“Good point
again, Teri! Yes, to the 24 hours for that special day which is covered so much
by the food of the celebration, that the settlers would not go hungry at last!”
RED SKIN
RACISM
Moving along
to stanza 4, Alenier suggested that
Stein is pointing to American Indians with use of the word red.
“Stanza 4 A
remarkable degree of red means that, a remarkable exchange is made may
involve racism here. Red referring
both to the cranberries brought to the settlers by the native American but also
to the color of their skin.”
Armour reacted as follows:
“That sour
unsweetened red of cranberries may be what GS had in mind, just that deep
strong colour (remember her love for a red hat?) —for some reason I don't
feel led to pursue that conventional white American myth around 'Red Indian'
and Thanksgiving, in part because GS was writing at such a different time and
for all we know she might have had more liberative and insightful views than
many around her. Or not.
“It's a
little like our contemporary thinking that Woolf should have known better
when it came to attitudes towards servants or Jewish people, when at the same
time those of us who are more privileged or buffered from oppression often fail
to notice our own blind spots and unquestioningly share the social attitudes of
those around us. This is always a challenge isn't it? How to think back with
historical insight and we see that with Ezra Pound and others.”
Alenier answered:
“Stein was
and was not a product of her time. Some of her family members supported the
Civil War, others, including her nuclear family, did not. She has much to say
about how to talk about the African American. She thought the word Negro
was a perfectly fine word. At times she was walking on the edge of racism as we
define it.
“Also the
way she talks about the Chinese shows an inherent prevailing prejudice but
nothing more than cliché.
“So she
doesn't come out and say anything but it hovers in the background because it is
and was part of American attitudes.”
WORD PLAY ON
CRANBERRY WORD
Moving on to
a new topic and referring to the last two stanzas of “Cranberries.”, Armour said:
“Just
staying with cranberries for the moment. German settlers named the fruit kranbeere because
the settlers thought the flower of the blooming cranberry resembled the head
and bill of a crane, or because the fruit gets its name because when the
flowers first bloom, they bend toward the ground like a crane. Was this a word
she could play with? Sour into sweet, a remarkable change and made edible by
sugar. Is this process of transforming fruit into jelly a process of suffering, akin to
suffering a sea change into something rich and strange?”
Alenier answered enthusiastically,
“I have been
reading a lot about the history of cranberry and just love the craneberry connection to the bird!”
SEASONAL
TRANSFORMATIONS
Going back
to the color aspect of stanza 4, Rife
added:
“A
remarkable degree of red and a yellow color make a mixed orange from
back in ‘Sugar.’. Red, yellow and orange are the colors of autumn and
Thanksgiving. A remarkable color change occurs when the production of
chlorophyll declines and surging sugar concentrations cause increased
production of anthocyanin pigments—voila! Red, yellow and orange.
“And, as
you've mentioned, there are changes effected by the process of cooking food.
We've seen references to the three states of matter (gas, liquid, solid)
in the Sugar and Cranberries subpoems. And lots of wet in the cranberry
bog.”
Alenier responded:
“Love your
ability to see what now seems obvious, Teri! The Thanksgiving colors! This is
exactly the kind of thing Stein expects her readers/viewers to experience from
her writing!
SETTLERS IN
AMERICA
Wrapping up
with comments on both stanzas 5 and 6, Alenier continued her close reading
through European settlers coming to America:
“In stanza 5,
Climbing all together in when there is a solid chance of soiling no more
than a dirty thing, coloring all of it in steadying is jelly, altogether makes me think of the
settlers as a community, first coming by ships to this new opportunity (solid
chance) of land where the cranberry grows.
“Stanza 6— Just
as it is suffering, just as it is succeeded, just as it is moist so is there no
countering—the new land is harsh (I’m thinking Massachusetts where one of
the early settlements was and where cranberries grew in the wild. So the
settlers suffer but they also begin to prosper in slow ways and they cannot go
back to Europe (no countering). The land is rich in resources like rain
and snow.
“So what
does my European-exodus-to-America interpretation mean in terms of Gertrude and
Alice?
“I think
this is Gertrude exploring new territory (union with Alice). It's a sweet and
sour (cranberry) kind of affair but there is no turning back.”
WHITMAN ON
CRANBERRY STREET
Moving on to
another item of Americana, Alenier
continued:
“Here's
another bit of Americana—Walt Whitman (whom we all know Gertrude Stein revered)
lived on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn NY.
“He also
liked to make coffee cakes and give them as gifts. Here's where I found
this info at a blog by Nicole
Villeneuve.”
Armour commented:
“And I do
wonder how Whitman's expansive outletting of breath might have encouraged
GS, to bring more song and repetition, endlessly rocking?
“I also find
that it is as if GS wants to celebrate something American and
homegrown in these lines, herself originally from the East Coast, Alice from
California, their bringing something of an American feast to Paris,
into that hot kitchen where flies had to be swatted and attention paid to the
process of turning raw red fruit into jams or preserves, the setting and
transformation of liquid into jelly.”
The final
comment for this discussion came from Alenier,
who said,
“Indeed I
believe GS was inspired to sing from the example set by Walt Whitman! The flies
make an active ‘seen’ bringing us presently into that jelly-making moment.”
AFTERTHOUGHTS
“There is
something philosophic going on as this subpoem opens with the repetition of could there not be.” Karren Alenier
After
pouring through the comments by the Buttons and the initial thought that Alenier
used to kick off the discussion but was not yet mentioned, the Steiny Road Poet
pauses here to reflect.
First there does
seems to be a philosophic approach established in stanza one followed by a call
to action in stanzas 2 and 3 and then commentary that ties things up in stanzas
4 through 6. Steiny thinks the philosophic discourse is tied up with what Mary
Armour calls the “that essential Americanness in Gertrude Stein.” In “Cranberries.”,
while Stein gives little hints of Moby
Dick (a discovery not made before the Buttons discussed “Cranberries.”)
with such echoes of sea shanties and such words associated with whaling as chain, cut, smelled, the main
thematic thrust of this subpoem is the Thanksgiving story. This story is about
European settlers in America getting help from the native Americans—the red
man.
Steiny thinks Stein is
talking about herself and the situation she and Toklas are choosing to live as a
same-sex couple. Like American Indians, they are outsiders to the European
settlement.
One additional thought,
which is cumulative after reading the first five subpoems of Food, is Stein’s
intention for Food, if not the entire collection of Tender Buttons, is that she is writing the ultimate American novel.
It’s a novel in verse but definitely a novel that breaks all the conventions
and stands apart from everything that has come before.
Participants: Karren
Alenier, Mary Armour, Judy Meibach, Teri Rife
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