Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Time to Eat.”

EATING FROM THE BUTTONS BOX

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

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

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           A TIME TO EAT: NUMBER 37

WORD COUNT......................-           19

STANZA(S)............................-           1

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.....................................-           POLITELY RAVENOUS BUT FINICKY

“My initial take on this is a cross between Fiddler on the Roof traditionalism and an episode of Downton Abbey.” Judy Meibach

“Each OBJECT has instructions,

is the instruction, the education, of how to read it.

If so this OBJECT should eaten rather than read.” Allan Keeton

A TIME TO EAT.

A pleasant simple habitual and tyrannical and authorised and educated and resumed and articulate separation. This is not tardy.

In presenting “A Time to Eat.” to the Buttons Collective, the Steiny Road Poet suggested that despite the opening words pleasant and simple, a patriarchal tyranny seems to rule. Among the topics discussed were eating, rules for eating, grammar rules, and details of Gertrude Stein’s family living, especially around food. This poem also takes on a certain reflection from Ecclesiastes 3:2—To Everything there is season, a time for every event under heaven…

EATING AND SEPARATION

While Dave Green walked the Buttons through the subpoem pointing out how each word applied to the act of eating, Karren Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny] read through the poem on the theme of separation.

Dave Green:

A TIME TO EAT. 

pleasant ==> eating is pleasant

simple ==> eating is a simple affair most of the time

habitual ==> we eat meals every day, they are daily habits

tyrannical ==> eating is tyrannical in the sense that we are driven to do it by hunger, we have no choice if we want to live

authorized ==> society sets aside times for meals, recognizes that people need to eat

educated ==> educated people know it is important to eat regular meals and to eat well

resumed ==> a meal is a resumption of eating since the previous meal

articulate ==> meals are occasions for conversation

separation ==> eating is a separation from hunger

This is not tardy. ==> We are eating at the right time. This is a time to eat. 

Karren Alenier:

Stein is describing separation in six ways.

A pleasant simple habitual separation ===> like people who live together but one goes on a trip at regular intervals. I think Leo occasionally traveled without Gertrude when they lived together before Alice enter the picture.

tyrannical separation ===> one person of a couple is put in jail, like Apollinaire when he was accused of stealing the Mona Lisa.

authorised separation ===> one person of a couple must report for military duty, like Apollinaire who was not a French citizen signed up for the French military during WWI and after his Mona Lisa incident.

educated separation ===> one person of twosome is sent off to college, like when Michael sent Gertrude, Bertha, & Leo east to Baltimore after their father died and then Leo went north to Harvard.

resumed separation ===> one person of a couple where they were not getting along leaves the relationship yet again, something like the stormy relationship Marie Laurencin had with Apollinaire.

articulate separation ===> perhaps one can think of Gertrude's departure from Johns Hopkins as one she thought through at length and over a period of time. It wasn't one thing that helped her make up her mind. It was true that she was suffering from the bad love affair with May Bookstaver where Gertrude felt not only spurned by made a fool. May said she was experimenting with love and moved from a woman to a man whom she married. Gertrude was also unhappy at Johns Hopkins where women were treated patronizingly or disdainfully. 

In this context, This is not tardy might mean these kinds of separations were not slow and they were some how expected. In the wake of these separations, one could only eat to mark time.

THE LINK BETWEEN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Peter Treanor remarked that Steiny’s separation read-through made him think of six degrees of separation, with full awareness that though separate, people are all increasingly interconnected. Steiny responded that six degrees of separation is so contrarian in that Steinian way of measuring the world.

Perhaps the impetus for this subpoem was Gertrude’s father Daniel who force fed his children castor oil. Perhaps the castor oil regimen is what gave Gertrude’s close-in-age brother Leo a bad stomach, if not psychological problems.

THE AND-NESS OF THIS EATING

However, the meat of the discussion centered on grammar—grammar rules and the way this subpoem is structured. Here are some highlights.

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Petticoat.” & “A Waist.”

-->XPERIMENTING IN THE BUTTONS BOX

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

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

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           A PETTICOAT: NUMBER 35

WORD COUNT......................-           11

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           A WAIST: NUMBER 36

WORD COUNT......................-           76

STANZAS..............................-           1 & 4 RESPECTIVELY

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.....................................-           SHAKING OFF DISGRACE

“Petticoat. Not underwear, exactly, but an undergarment meant to be shown, light white—lacy. It is subservient to outer garments but still peeking out. All about creating a shape. An image.” Randy Parker

“I'm exploring a new way of looking at ‘A Waist.’—as a grammatical artifact/object rather than a poem with meaning.” Eleanor Smagarinsky

A PETTICOAT.

A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.

A WAIST.

A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass greediness.

Object that is in wood. Hold the pine, hold the dark, hold in the rush, make the bottom.

A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time.

A wooden object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace, a couple of practices any of them in order is so left.

In the forthcoming Corrected Centennial Edition of Tender Buttons as edited by Seth Perlow, “A Waist.” has a significant correction. The second word of the fourth stanza is wooden not woolen as in A wooden object gilded. Since both of these subpoems refer in some degree to what is worn on the body and specifically around the waist, the correction removes a word with stronger connection to petticoat and waist. It might be a mistake that was first made by Alice B. Toklas when she typed what Gertrude Stein hand wrote in her notebook.

As the Steiny Road Poet noted when she opened the discussion among the Button Collective, both of these subpoems use the word disgrace and initially Steiny had thought both dealt with clothing but with the correction that seemed less significant.

Among the associations and approaches ascribed to these subpoems were: blouses called waists, undergarments both as ladies wear and for military purposes, the Stein-Toklas walk in the Tuscan hills when GS proposed to ABT, women being held to higher standards of physical appearance than men, the break up of sister Gertrude and brother Leo Stein, time, female parts and menstruation, violin waist, the lead up to World War I, and the strange grammar of Gertrude Stein. Besides the metapoetic play, there were a couple of attempts to echo Stein creatively by writing a new poem and other attempts to read these subpoems through art and though poems by other authors. Steiny has sifted through the many comments and provided highlights only.

ON THE PETTICOAT & SEX

Allan Keeton:

 

“Late Middle English: from petty coat, literally ‘small coat.’

“This one is not small & it seems

to be worn to cover exactly

the opposite half of the body

that coats typically cover.”

Dave Green:

“Imagine Gertrude in a petticoat. A petticoat suggests light whiteness and a rosy female charm. But some might see Gertrude as a disgrace because of her sexuality and ink-stained as a writer, which was a typically male profession at the time. So there's a clash between the external garment (the two ends of the poem) and the person wearing and enclosed by the garment (the middle of the poem). So maybe Stein is imagining this image and making an ironical observation about it.”

Peter Treanor:

“The disgrace that is associated with the stain on the petticoat, what can this be? I guess there would be some possible disgrace associated with having an ink stain on a petticoat. But disgrace seems such a strong word, I feel more that a bloodstain (looking like an ink spot) may convey more of a feeling of disgrace. And blood is suggested a little with rosy charm. Rose, red or pink.

“And spot has a suggestion of blood. And the bloodstain being from possible start of a period (full stop....) or from the blood associated with a woman loosing her virginity. The disgrace being that it was obvious that the petticoat wearer had been having sex. It made me think of all the rituals that were abundant in Europe about displaying the wedding sheets in public post wedding night to prove the bride was a virgin and that the marriage had been consummated. 
Or maybe the " disgrace" was associated with dots of menstrual blood on the petticoat.

Both these seem more likely to me to be described or perceived in society as disgraceful, more so than an ink spot.
And maybe that is why the poem and petticoat is so short and the commas make it so breathless, the wearer has been having sex for the first time. What a rosy charming thing.”

Peter also pointed “Petticoat.” back to “Nothing Elegant.”

NOTHING ELEGANT.

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

“Look at the similarities, in ‘Petticoat’: it (charm) is a disgrace. [in ‘Nothing Elegant’] it’s doubtful. 

“In petticoat it’s a rosy charm, [in ‘Nothing Elegant’] it’s followed by red is rose , both symbols of love/ romance.

“Then in ‘Waist’ ( following ‘Petticoat’) we’ve got single again (as above), there's change too. And there's a strong feeling of sex here,  red, rose/rise (erection), if inside is let in, something being upright.

“All three titles could refer to clothes or fashion or things being worn (or taken off) Petticoat, Waist and Nothing Elegant.”

Eleanor Smagarinsky:

"Pleats and ruffles—The vulva and the vagina feature a variety of textures. Most of the vulva is smooth, but some women's labia minora have a ruffled appearance...As for the texture inside the vagina, it's full of bumpy ridges called rugae." (From here.)

“We've seen a "charm" before, here. 

“Ring-a-ring o' roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo! 

We all fall down.

“Is Stein experimenting with a new way to describe the female body? A new language for a new experience?

“There's a 3rd disgrace in this book, it's in ‘A Substance in a Cushion.’ -- "The disgrace is not in carelessness nor even in sewing it comes out out of the way." [The disgrace is not in carelessness nor even in sewing it comes out out of the way.] Which is strange, because we have ‘so’ in ‘A Waist.—‘any of them in order is so left.’ Is she repairing something? Repairing a broken language? A broken sexuality?”

DISCARDING THE PETTICOAT

Karren Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny]:

“Gertrude didn't like wearing such frilly things. They got in her way. The fact of an ink spot, maybe looking like a rose, seems to be Gertrude's, the writer's, plight.  Alice discarded such garments when she got overheated.

“I think these two subpoems relate to ‘A Method of Cloak.’:

A METHOD OF A CLOAK.

A single climb to a line, a straight exchange to a cane, a desperate adventure and courage and a clock, all this which is a system, which has feeling, which has resignation and success, all makes an attractive black silver.

“Petticoat is a method of cloaking—covering.

A single climb to a line seems a lot like A wooden object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace,

Gilded wooden object

“I'm thinking the gilded wooden object could be a pencil (which could make a line) or it could be a picnic basket. 

“Anyway I'm reminded of the hike into the hills with Alice where Alice discarded undergarments and Stein proposed to Alice. Here I'm quoting myself:

“When GS first met ABT in 1907 getting time alone with her was difficult because ABT had a traveling companion, Harriet Levy. In the summer of 1908, GS and family members were vacationing in Fiesole, a suburb of Florence and GS had suggested that ABT and HL take up a villa nearby to the Stein villa. During that summer, GS had many private walks with ABT through the Tuscan hills. Stein usually walked with a walking stick (cane, shall we say?). During one of these very hot up-in-the-hills walks (Stein rose late after writing all night and Toklas typically resorted to removing articles of underclothing that made her insufferably hot on these walks), Stein proposed to Alice. For Stein, who had suffered a failed love relationship with May Bookstaver during Med school, establishing a love relationship with Alice was a desperate adventure taking courage. I suspect she felt time was running out for finding love. The whole experience of establishing a love relationship was for Stein "a system, which has feeling but also resignation and (hopefully) success.”

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “Malachite.” & “An Umbrella.”

LUDIC LUNCH IN THE BUTTONS BOX

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

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

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           MALACHITE: NUMBER 33

WORD COUNT......................-           18

THE SUBPOEM ...................-           AN UMBRELLA: NUMBER 34

WORD COUNT......................-           24

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.....................................-           HEADY

“An umbrella is a contextual framework which attempts to cover everything.” Allan Keeton

MALACHITE.

The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.

AN UMBRELLA.

Coloring high means that the strange reason is in front not more in front behind. Not more in front in peace of the dot.

To open this discussion by The Buttons Collective, the Steiny Road Poet suggested that the objects of “Malachite.” and “An Umbrella.”—spoon and umbrella—had handles. Then she suggested that how to get a handle on these two subpoems might be through the words decision and reason.

Among the association these subpoems elicited were: love-making; folklore of malachite; Egyptian cosmetics; copper & measuring spoons; fish lures; post-Stein umbrella pop culture: Mary Poppins, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Singing in the Rain, Jason Mraz’s song “The Forecast”; Robert Louis Stevenson’s essay “The philosophy of umbrellas”; tightrope walking; punctuation as symbolic spoons and exclamation marks; Pointillism & Matisse; Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots; the politics of mining; the malachite sunbird; and metapoetics. What follows are some highlights from the study session.

  

ON LOVE-MAKING

Allan Keeton’s first comments were, “I love these two. There is something erotic in all that fronting & behinding.”

Steiny agreed saying, “Allan, yes, they seem tactile and sexual. Spooning in 'Malachite.', a visceral description that seems like spooning in 'An Umbrella." with emphasis on front—front occurs 3 times.” 

Tamboura Gaskins saw “An Umbrella.” as “beautifully-expressed love note from Stein to Toklas”:

“Coloring high means that… ==> Because I am so high-colored… ==> Because I have such a strong, vivid personality…

“…the strange reason is in front… ==>… it is perceived, strangely, that I am in front… ==> …that I am the leader… ==> …that I am the dominant one…

“…not more in front… ==> …I am not more in front ==> …I am not the leader… ==> …I am not the dominant one… ==> I do not overshadow you

“…behind. ==> be ∙ hind ==> be a female deer ==> be a dear ==> B. dear ==> Alice B. Toklas, dear 

“Not more in front… ==> No, not better than you ==> not out in front casting a shadow on you

“…in peace of the dot. ==> Peace, be still, dot ==> Rest assured, do∙t ==> Be peaceful, doe T ==> Be at peace, dear Alice B. Toklas

“Simply marvelous!!  Great way to make up after a falling out!”

Steiny notes here that the discussion for “Water Raining.” speculated about the possibility of a love spat.

Eleanor Smagarinsky followed up on Tamboura’s love note interpretation with:

“Tamboura wrote:

… it is perceived, strangely, that I am in front…

“I'm tempted to see it also as:

...the stranger is always in front --- meaning: when I am in public (in front), I wear a different face .... a public persona ... and it seems perhaps like I don't love you... as if I am a stranger...

“The words front and back remind me of running a restaurant - there's the back of the house and the front of the house. I imagine, from what I've heard on some of our threads, that Alice was more back of the house and considered by most to be the woman behind the woman. Perhaps this is Gertrude's way of saying the work at the back of the house is more important than what I do at the front.”