SPYING FROM THE BUTTONS BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- IN
BETWEEN: NUMBER 42
WORD
COUNT......................-
70
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.....................................-
THEATRICAL
“Gertrude is
transgressive and determined to get away with it. Touching, tasting,
mounting, saying, playing.” Mary Armour
IN BETWEEN.
In between a place and candy is a
narrow foot path that shows more mounting than anything, so much really that a
calling meaning a bolster measured a whole thing with that. A virgin a whole
virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and real seasons and
more out glasses and a perfectly unprecedented arrangement between old ladies
and mild colds there is no satin wood shining.
Jumping ahead
of the obvious sexual pointing, Mary
Armour asserted, “what
I detect here is the subtle play on fetish: the narrow foot, licking
or sucking candy, the fantasy of pretending to be a virgin in bed, the
narrow path to be explored, the space between pillowy breasts, between fleshy
curves, a finger outlining the nipple, skin soft as satin, silky as
polished wood, erectile tissue of the nipple or button.”
Mary suggests reading “In
Between.” in this excerpted way to fully appreciate the sexual innuendo:
IN
BETWEEN.
In
between a place and candy
a
narrow foot
path
that shows more mounting than anything
so
much really
calling
a
whole thing
A
virgin
a
whole virgin
so
between curves
and
outlines and
real
seasons and more
a
perfectly unprecedented arrangement
satin
wood
shining.
Less obvious than the sexual
content, the Buttons also discovered associations with the Leo-Gertrude-Alice
situation, quilting, the Jewish wedding tradition of Aufruf, and the 1913
ballet The Rite of Spring and that theater experience as well as some
grammatical issues. Here are highlights from the study session:
THREADING THE NEEDLE CALLED
BETWEEN
Peter Treanor:
“The first thing I noticed
though was the title "In Between.", [Stein] seems to have
broken with the use of concrete nouns.”
Tamboura Gaskins:
“Has
she done away with concrete nouns? I don't know...perhaps just on the
surface of it all--
“between ==> a short needle with a rounded eye and a sharp point, used
for fine hand stitchery in heavy fabric.
“Btw, Peter, in
between is an idiom utilizing two juxtaposed prepositions.
“I spy a quilt...”
In Between ==> threading the needleDefinitions:1) Technical definition: to put a piece of thread through a needle2) Definition as an expression: to skillfully navigate a difficult problem (like putting a piece of thread through a needle, it has to be done very carefully and precisely)3) Billiards definition: is to precisely shoot the object ball or the cue ball through a very tight or narrow pathway to it's intended destination. (Note this is an application of definition #2, using it for billiards)
From quilting imagery, Tamboura moved to the situation between sister
and brother Gertrude and Leo Stein once Alice moved into their apartment at 27
rue de Fleurus.
“Leo -
Gertrude - Alice ==> the three layers of a quilt: backing, batting and
decorative quilt top.
“And let's
not forget the idiomatic phrase—“
in betweena. situated in an intermediary area or on a line or imaginary line connecting two points, things, etc.b. in the way: I reached for the ball, but the dog got in between.
“Again, an
allusion to Gertrude feeling caught in between Leo and Alice.
“This brings
me to believe that underneath it all GS has written a subpoem with layers
describing her precarious position caught between Leo and Alice as well as
the qualities of a quilt and quilt construction.”
GERTRUDE
STEIN’S TIMELINE SHIFT
1901
Spring: Stein leaves Johns Hopkins University
without completing her medical degree.
Summer: with Leo Stein in Morocco &
Spain.
1902
Spring: with Leo Stein in Italy and in fall in London
1903
Winter: GS in NY
Summer: in Italy
Fall: moves into Leo's apartment 27 rue de
Fleurus, Paris
1904
Spring: GS visits friends in NY & Boston
Summer: in Florence with Leo
Fall: Leo & Gertrude buy first modern
painting
1905 First purchases of paintings by Matisse & Picasso;
Saturday night salons begin
Summer: with Leo in Italy
1906
Picasso portrait completed (begun in 1905)
1907
Alice B. Toklas arrives in Paris with Harriet Levy
1908
Summer: in Italy when GS courts to ABT
1909
Three Lives self
published
1910
Summer: GS, LS, ABT in Italy: GS & ABT celebrate
their "marriage" in Venice
Winter: Toklas moves into 27 rue de
Fleurus
1911
Summer: GS & ABT in Italy, they visit Mabel Dodge
in her Villa outside Florence
1912
Summer: GS & ABT in Spain & Morocco
Word portraits of Matisse & Picasso
published in
Camera Work (a journal published by
Alfred Stieglitz)
1913
January: GS & ABT in England looking for publishers
Summer: GS & ABT in Spain
Fall: GS & LS split up, LS moves
to Italy
1914
April: LS completely moves out
27 rue de Fleurus apartment undergoes
renovations
May: Tender Buttons published
July: GS & ABT in England when WWI begins
Fall: GS & ABT return to Paris
after a prolonged stay
in England due to WWI
The issues
of grammar continued to be on Peter’s mind and he said:
“I
think of ‘between the sheets’ or the space, or closeness, between two
bodies.
“In
between a place AND candy is AND. And AND is also in between ‘c’ and ‘y’ in
‘cANDy.’ A preposition (i.e. between)
proposing to a couple of conjunctions (and and). Conjunction being from conjoining, to join or merge. So what
exactly is that proposition proposing??
“I also
think of ‘in between the legs,’ a place, a sweet
place ( like candy)
.
“A narrow foot path, a passageway, a
conduit, a narrow foot path by a (birth) canal
perhaps (do you guys have canals with footpaths? they are dotted around the UK
especially in the cities, and in Paris too) . So I’m veering towards a vagina here. A foot path, a little play
with a toe maybe. And foot paths and mounting, I’m with Claudia on this one.. [Claudia Schumann suggested, “The sexual
act for lesbians would be more mounting than the other way heterosexuals do
it”]. I'm beginning to see what the preposition is proposing now!
“A
virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines. Are we back to the hymen here? A whole
and intact virgin, judged so by what is in between the curves and outlines of
her vulva? (Or is that vulvas, plural?) There may be a question about whether
it is still intact after all that boisterous bolster work. And is GS asking
what counts as an act that constitutes loosing ones virginity, especially in the
context of two women having (a variety of) sexual contact, but not penetration
by a penis? Is she saying that they are judged,
as in condemned or looked negatively upon?
”A
virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and
real seasons and more out glasses and a perfectly unprecedented arrangement
between old ladies and mild colds there is no satin wood shining.
”She’s gone mad with the and's from here on in, not so many in
the poem before this part, but now there are loads. Lots of conjunctions from
conjoin relating
to conjugation.
So much joining going on!
“What
are real seasons and more out glasses though? Real seasons maybe realisations? More out
glasses maybe moral out casts? A
bit tenuous I know. But Is she saying that lesbian relations are judged in so
many different ways, by the sex acts (was she commenting on the relentless
questioning of ‘who does what to whom and how by her bohemian friends in the
salons?) the state of the hymen, are we virgins or not without
penetration of a penis?, whether it is seen (realized/open) and then how
it is morally pigeon holed? (Probably
not, but maybe)
“It is
a perfectly unprecedented arrangement between old (and young) women. Unprecedented is
interesting ‘never known or done before,’ this type of arrangement was both
known and done from long before, but is both known and unknown, a suppressed
and repressed secret in society.
Mild
colds makes me think of the shivers, the shivers of orgasm from bouncing
around on the bolster and each other. The shivers of being left out in the cold
in the arrangement of recognised and accepted ways to be a couple in the modern
world.
And I’m with Claudia on the ‘no satin wood shining’ as no erect penis here, (meaning in the
poem, or in between the people in the poem).”
THE GROOM CALLED UP
Steiny
asked for the Buttons to take a deeper look at the word calling. Eleanor Smagarinsky
found this citation from Wikipedia:
Aufruf (Yiddish: אויפרוף ofrif,oyfruf, ufruf/ifrif or אויפרופן ofrifn), which in Yiddish means "calling up," is the Jewish custom of a groom being called up in the synagogue for an aliyah, i.e., recitation of a blessing over the Torah.[1] In the Ashkenazic Jewish community the aufruf ceremony is held on the Shabbat before the wedding; in the Sephardic and Mizrachi traditions, it is called Shabbat Hatan (lit. groom's Sabbath) and is held on the Shabbat after the wedding.After the Torah reading, the congregation sings a congratulatory song and the women throw candies at the groom. In non-Orthodox congregations, the bride and groom may be called up to the Torah together.[2] It is customary for the family of the groom to invite the congregation to a festive Kiddush after the services.[1]
So
there we have the bridegroom in the synagogue (place) walking down the aisle (narrow
foot path) to mount the bema,
the alter well before the congratulatory candy
is thrown for his aliyah (calling),
that blessing over the Torah which will bolster
his standing in the community. And so it that his bride (the virgin) was made his wife and he sealed this troth by crushing glass and signing the wedding license
called the Ketubah. The old ladies
who were the matchmakers and family for this once in a life time (unprecedented) arrangement now sit sniffling (mild
colds) in joy in the plain seats (no
satin wood shining) of their balcony (orthodox men and women are separated
in the house of worship).
PARIS RIOT AT THE RITE OF SPRING
What calling called up for Karren Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny] by way
of Moses mounting Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments was a look into the
sacrifice of virgins. She discovered that virgin sacrifice to the God of
Spring is part of the story for Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (Le
Sacre du Printemps), which premiered in Paris May 29, 1913.
Gertrude
Stein & Alice Toklas went to the second performance of this ballet.
Opening night, the audience booed, made catcalls, whistled and generally riotedincluding fistfights and things thrown. It was a huge scandal that Stein was
aware of before she attended the next night's performance and people were still
misbehaving but not as bad as opening night.
The line about
more out glasses could be the old ladies in the balconies and boxes of
the audience pulling out and adjusting their opera glasses to better see what
was going on and to see how Nijinsky was dressed. He looked naked. You can get
the gist of it in clips from the BBC film about this ballet.
Looking at the
entire subpoem speaks of being in the theater with the candy, the narrow aisles
(passages), even the bolsters in the box furnishings, how seats are mounted on
risers, and the opera house box rails were possibly wood buffed to a satiny
shine.
RELECTIONS
ON UNNAMED THINGS IN BETWEEN…
Peter
reflected on the separation into two words of satin wood and foot path:
“Just
wondering why foot path is two words
and not footpath, one word? And a
narrow path for a foot, which shows mounting, makes me think of a ladder or
stirrup. The narrow rungs of a ladder as a place for a foot or a stirrup
as a narrow place for a foot—both used for mounting and moving up a ladder
seems to be more of a path , as something you can move upwards on.
So the
Steiny Road Poet in the light of these thoughts about what is between Stein’s
words turns down the flame in her lantern and moves on.
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