A UNIVERSE IN THE BUTTONS
BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK
...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
A NEW CUP AND SAUCER: NUMBER 24
STANZAS..............................-
1
WORD COUNT......................- 16
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
OBJECTS: NUMBER 25
STANZAS..............................-
3
WORD
COUNT......................- 49
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.....................................- AWED
A NEW CUP AND SAUCER.
Enthusiastically hurting a clouded yellow bud and
saucer, enthusiastically so is the bite in the ribbon.
OBJECTS.
Within, within the cut and slender joint alone, with
sudden equals and no more than three, two in the centre make two one side.
If the elbow is long and it is filled so then the
best example is all together.
The kind of show is made by squeezing.
Part two looks at “Objects.”
and the work that the Buttons Collective had to do to move to a higher level of
understanding about the mastery of what Gertrude Stein achieves with this
seminal subpoem.
OBJECTS OF SPECIALTY GARDENING
Later, Mary Armour
said,
“French garden design and
grooming of plants is meticulous and formal -- and has been since the time of
Andre Le Notre [the principal gardener of Louis XIV and responsible for design
and construction of the park surrounding the Palace of Versailles]. They graft
everything that can be grafted to produce exquisite fruit or blossoms, they
prune and shape with nail scissors. Small ornamental 'lollipop' trees
in white-painted Versailles planters do not have a leaf out of shape.
Rootstock has a written and certified genealogy, fruit is espaliered and trained
along trellis frames, style is an obsession from the planting of seeds to
the final pollarding of ancient vines. For a sloppy amateur gardener,
classic French planting is unattainable. I've yet to meet an amateur French
gardener, they all have a degree of professionalism that puts the rest of
us to shame.
“It makes sense to me that
Gertrude would have seen Parisian plant-lovers at work, especially in the
spring and autumn, tying up new climbers, grafting and pruning, vigilant to
protect new buds, monitoring their experiments in grafting, placing fresh
straw under strawberries, keeping ripening peaches in paper bags. Topping
and deadheading.
“An ongoing 'enthusiastic
hurting' of the plant in order to ensure beauty and fecundity.”
SEEING INTO THE LETTERS
& DEVISING FORMULAS
After the grafting and
pruning comments, Peter Treanor and Mark flailed around trying to dig in deeper
to OBJECTS. Peter ran his intuitive anagram strategy:
“The repeating of within,
suggests she’s up to something, maybe. Are within within the sudden equals? The
same words are they equal? It is the one being to one side of slender
joint alone that got me wondering in the first place about
it.
“I’ve done all sorts of
gymnastics with slender joint alone, which she seems to suggest should be
cut. Tried to follow the pointers in the line. There are no more than three of
the same letter, E and N occur three times. Maybe they are sudden equals? O is
(in) the centre letter of the 3 words [slender joint alone]. And there are two
O's in the three words (two in the centre).
“And ‘int al’ are the
letters that lie between the two O's. Two in the centre seem like they should
make something but I can’t see what. Two I's in ‘int al’ would make initial, but
that is stretching it a bit far even for me, I think! Oh but anymore
alludes me, I’m sure there’s something in there though, and the sentence is
pointing, obliquely as usual, to itself.”
Mark conjectured a “strange
mathematical equation or computer programming language”:
“[WITHIN [within the cut and
slender joint alone] WITH SUDDEN = AND NO MORE THAN THREE] (then) [2 IN
THE CENTER = 2 ON ONE SIDE]
“or
“WITHIN [within the cut and
slender joint alone with sudden] = AND NO MORE THAN THREE (then) [2 IN THE
CENTER = 2 ON ONE SIDE]
“Something like that,
depending on how you parse it. Having done that, I'm still perplexed!”
While Eleanor Smagarinsky
held her aching head, Steiny cheered Mark on:
“I think Gtrude probably had
some kind of logic equation working—something she would have learned from
William James. So let's keep playing that angle. It might yield yet another
angle in the cubist system to pointing.
“Also I'm reading The Banquet Years: The Origins of the
Avant-Garde in France 1885 to WWI--Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie,
Guillaume Apollinaire. In this book, I am seeing Gtrude tapped into the
zeitgeist of her time and near past.
“I like these lines from the
book:
Discursive logic is linear and moves from point to
point. Art of the modern era, like religious meditation, is circular and
revolves around a point whose location is limitless.
“Does this not sound a bit
Gertrude-ish? Her system to pointing is circular as we are learning.”
Peter jumped back into the
code-breaking game saying he was “channeling Alan (Turing)”:
“2 ON ONE SIDE], there
are 2 E's on the one side (right ) of the words
[2 IN THE CENTER, there are
2 E's in the center of the word center ( depending on which spelling is used,
center / centre).
AND NO MORE THAN
THREE], there are not more than 3 E's in the phrase , there are in fact 3 .
“7E's on that side of the
operation.
“Alan (Turing) seems to be
baffled by the other half of the equation and on what all those E's could mean,
be or do.”
SQUEALS & SQUEEZING
Steiny rejoined:
“That's a good go at that,
Peter. All those E's set up a high-pitched squeal if they are isolated.
“Only the word three has
that squeal power as a word. However, if the title of the subpoem—OBJECTS—is a
verb than the squeal has some meaning and look it does lead eventually to
squeezing.
“Not sure Turing is liking
what I am saying.”
Here Allan Keeton entered
the conversation making reference to a musical thread involving squeezeboxes
(accordions) and bagpipes :
Wow squEaling Es!
A bagpipe squEals with
squEEzing.
A climatic moment!
Steiny, ever the voice of
reason, floated this thought: “Now I'm wondering if we have squeezed out all
the air from "Objects." I keep thinking we are still missing
something here given its repetition of Section 1 title name.”
ALPHABET THEORIES
But Eleanor undaunted had
two new theories:
Theory #1—objectifying women
“two in the centre
The centre of the word two
is W.
"make two one side.
We call W doubleyou [U+U],
but it's really doublevee [V+V].
W is for woman/women.
Do we sometimes objectify
women? Are they objects?
There are two sides to
humans—i.e. two genders—male & female.
The letter W takes two of
the one side and puts them together.
Two women, side by side.”
Theory #2—The Incomplete Roman
Alphabet
“It suddenly occurred to me
that "Objects." contains letters which are generally rare, I mean - Q
and X and Z. So I checked all of the letters used in this poem, and every
single letter of the alphabet is used other than TWO:
V
and
Y”
SQUEEZE PLAY
Now hold on to these
theories, Dear Reader, for a brief interlude where Mark found another way to
look at "Objects." through baseball. Mark said referring to Judy
Meibach’s research on the root meaning squeeze,
“You got me thinking about
the etymology of the word squeeze, and it occurred to me- this is out of left
field of course, but our discussion of baseball came to mind!
“The squeeze play,
or suicide squeeze,
(for folks who don't know baseball) is when a runner on third base suddenly
breaks for home as the batter bunts the ball. The intent is to catch the
pitcher and catcher out of position so neither can field the ball and tag the
runner out, allowing the runner to score. It is a rare play but it is
quite climactic when it happens.
“Of course, a batter can
show bunt and not try to bunt the ball, perhaps as the runner on third feints
to run home, again to catch defenders off guard (if there is a runner on first,
for example, who might be able to benefit from the confusion and steal second
base). Maybe even a double steal, where the runner on first breaks for
second, then when the defenders respond by throwing the ball to second base,
the runner on third breaks for home.
“WITHIN the foul lines (the
CUT AND SLENDER JOINT) the game is played. ALONE the batter stands by
himself—the rest of his team is on the bench waiting to bat. There are NO
MORE THAN THREE runners because there are only three bases besides home plate.
TWO infielders IN THE CENTRE (second baseman and shortstop) and TWO on
each SIDE (first baseman and third baseman).
“IF THE ELBOW IS LONG AND IT
IS FILLED (if the bases are loaded) THEN THE BEST EXAMPLE IS ALL TOGETHER (a
grand slam home run).”
Collective Buttons’ memory
surfaced the baseball imagery seen in “A Plate.”
to which Steiny added,
“In PLATE there is also
centre:”
Pack together a string and
enough with it to protect the centre, cause a considerable haste and gather
more as it is cooling, collect more trembling and not any even trembling, cause
a whole thing to be a church.
“Also there is a lot of
cutting:”
Cut cut in white, cut in
white so lately. Cut more than any other and show it. Show it in the stem and
in starting and in evening coming complication.
“While plant pruning was
mentioned, we didn't discuss that in PLATE. So there is nothing idle about the
cutting and squeezing going on in ‘A New Cup and Saucer.’
And, well, this subpoem is
called OBJECTS, which is a repetition of the section name so this subpoem is
important in the overall schema of Tender
Buttons.”
OF ROASTS, SENTENCE STRUCTURE
& SUPERMETAPHOR
Sarah Maitland Parks offered
that "Objects." reminded her of “a forceful, skillful cook preparing
a joint of meat for roasting. Holding it tightly, tying it up in 2 places with
string to divide it up into thirds. The joint could even have some stuffing in
it so the meat needs to be tightly wrapped around the innards and trussed up
before cooking. A cook would give the prepared joint a good old squeeze before
putting it on the roasting tin and placing it in the oven.”
There was also discussion of
the squeezing going on in making dumplings.
However, Steiny, taking
another run at the elusive subpoem, pondered,
“ Objects
“Could be a sentence
component: subject, verb, compound or complex objects.
“This is Stein saying
something about writing with nouns perhaps?”
Allan with pickaxe at the
ready asked, “How does this subpoem OBJECTS stand in for the entire collection
of subpoems in OBJECTS? Can they all be squeezed into this OBJECTS? There must
be something recursive happening.”
IN THE BEGINNING, OBJECTS
REPEATED
And then, Judy casually
offers what moves the entire conversation to a new level of understanding and
awe for Gertrude Stein’s achievement. If the following seems to lack color,
Steiny insists this is the quiet before the storm when the sky turns red:
“but there has to be a
reason—you know I was thinking—in the Old Testament—at least in the
Hebrew—the title of the individual books i.e. Genesis, etc. is often the title
of the first 'set of chapters'—I know that it might not make sense in English—
but when I think of the Hebrew—which is how I learned it—it makes sense—now
it makes sense in terms of Stein.”
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1 comment:
Charming, VERY charming!
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