TOKENS IN THE BUTTONS BOX
THE SUBBOOK
...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- A
DOG: NUMBER 50
WORD
COUNT......................-
30
THE SUBPOEM ...................- A
WHITE HUNTER: NUMBER 51
WORD
COUNT......................-
6
STANZA(S)............................-
1 EACH
THE
LEADER........................-
THE STEINY ROAD POET
GENRE..................................-
VIRTUAL OPERA
LOCATION............................-USA,
UK, Australia, Philippines, S. Africa, Canada.
TIME......................................-
ALL HOURS OF EARTH’S CLOCK
TONE.....................................-
JAUNTY BUT CRAZED
“Whistle for
your dog and find your weapon of choice.” Karren
Alenier
A DOG.
A little monkey goes like a donkey that
means to say that means to say that more sighs last goes. Leave with it. A
little monkey goes like a donkey.
A WHITE HUNTER.
A white hunter is nearly crazy.
In part 3 of Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A
Dog.", “A White Hunter.", The Buttons explore fencing as a Steinian
approach to writing, the lesbian code of keys, the musical key of a Steinian
text, how a pageboy from Shakespeare elicited discussion of the blank page, Again, note that some of this conversation can
be heard in Eleanor Smagarinsky’s sound
file “Dog and Hunter Overture.”
PARRY FEINT
TOUCHÉ—ANOTHER WAY STEIN WRITES
Liking Peter Treanor’s riff on A Dog è Goad [end of Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Dog.", “A White Hunter." Part 2 of 3], Eleanor answered:
“GOAD
• A spiked stick used for driving cattle.
• A thing that stimulates someone into
action:
And Karren
said in her introduction to this thread:
‘find your
weapon of choice.’
“OK, this is
fun...let's see....
"to
say that means to say
‘touché
that means to say’
“touché—Used
to acknowledge a hit in fencing or the success or appropriateness of an
argument, an accusation, or a witty point.
Feint
An offensive
movement resembling an attack in all but its continuance. It is an attack into
one line with the intention of switching to another line before the attack is
completed. A feint is intended to draw a reaction from an opponent. This is the
‘intention’, and the reaction is generally a parry, which can then be deceived.
“Sums up exactly
my experience with reading Tender Buttons.
So many keys, none of them properly labelled. And the huge ego of Stein,
hurting my own considerable ego as she goads me into thinking I ‘get it’ and
then proving that I don't. And I keep coming back for another round.”
Allan Keeton:
“It is an attack into one line with the intention of
switching to another line before the attack is completed.
A feint
is intended to draw a reaction from an opponent.
This is
the ‘intention’, and the reaction is generally a parry, which can then be
deceived.
“O it does
seem that Stein feints her lines all the time.
“She
switches lines before completing the given line.
This is her line
of attack.
It is fluid.
It is her
intent.
To draw a
reaction from the reader.
A bold move
that only appears faint if one
expects to
read a line to completion.”
Karren:
“Allan, That fainting feint is how Stein makes
a mater-peace as opposed
to a master-piece.”
Within 24
hours, Eleanor had additional
thoughts about keys:
“Pete,
regarding the keys you found...do you reckon Stein's playing on the French mon and ton?
MON KEY - my key
TON KEY - your key
That's what
G & A have in common? Not only sexually, but also linguistically....after
all...if these poems are coded love notes from G to A then they'd both have to
know what the key was, to break the code. Non?
“Leave with it—you should always make
sure that you have your keys before you leave the house. I mean, this really
could be as simple as that -- a funny coded message written the day after Alice
forgets her keys (when they leave the house to walk the dog?), and they're
locked out. A rhyme to remember your keys. Delightful.”
Karren:
“I love
it Eleanor that you found the mon-(d)ton keys in this sexually charged set of
anima-(ls)-ani-mus.
“I'm
thinking keys could be kisses.”
Eleanor:
“Karren,
kisses!! I just remembered—in Swedish you often find people say or write ‘pus pus / puss puss’ at the end of a conversation, it
means ‘kiss kiss’! It took my by surprise when a Swedish friend used it for the
first time ;-) [pusspuss glances back to “Shoes.” and the line It is pus that might indeed be code for Pussy, one of Gertrude’s terms of
endearment for her partner Alice.]
MORE EAR
TUNING
The keys
discussion elicited this from Claudia
Schumann:
“Could the
keys relate to music keys? Maybe it's a code for different musical
pieces. A little monkey goes like a donkey.
“If you
change the key of a piece (monkey) it will sound different (go like a donkey).”
Eleanor:
“Claudia!
Musical keys!!! So much to think about now.....the sound of a piano, the tuning
of an instrument, the composition of a poem, the musicality of the text. Can
poems be written in different keys?!! I love that idea.”
Allan:
“Right,
Claudia!
“mon key:
The key of G
don key:
The key of A
So Alice
must be Don Qui-xote.
“Following
the scent of the Don who (qui) xote.
It turns out
to be a Brazilian musical
genre
and dance for pairs or for foursomes
(the donkey goes on fours)
“I am sure
that it can be played in
the key of G
or in the key of A.
Maybe there
can be a change of key
from G to A
or A to G.”
Karren:
“OK, Allan,
your lines,
your lines
of
reasoning
are
Xquisitely
pleasing
“So Alice
must be Don Qui-xote.
SHAKESPEAREAN
PAGE VERSUS PAPER PAGE
Peter:
“A line from
A Midsummer Nights Dream [toward end
of Stepping
on Tender Buttons: “A Dog.", “A White Hunter." Part 2 of 3] struck me -
‘I’ll make
her render up her page to me.’
“A page, white,
blank and pure. The writer, reader and first time lover could all be seen as
hunters (hunters of white, white hunters) wanting to make the first mark on the
white page. Something about pursuit and desire making people crazy.
But not sure if its good crazy or bad crazy.”
Eleanor:
“Concerning
the page...well.....the bad news is that Oberon's referring to Titania's
pageboy, the good news is that it's still relevant to ‘something
about pursuit and desire making people crazy. But not sure if it’s
good crazy or bad crazy’ because Oberon is super-jealous of the pageboy, as
Titania showers him (and not Oberon) with affection. Another possible
interpretation of the pageboy obsession, is that Titania was ‘very close’ to
the pageboy's mother (who died and left the boy under Titania's care), so
there's that to be jealous about too.
“It's
interesting that GS writes ‘nearly crazy,’ and I'm also undecided as to how
good-crazy or bad-crazy this ‘crazy’ is. Furthermore, the ‘nearly’ gives me no
end of grief...I mean...how can you be ‘nearly’ crazy? Where do you draw the
line? Perhaps GS is making a profound comment here on the difficulty in
defining a relationship, particularly a love relationship. Are you a lover or a
hunter? Are you conquering? Colonising? Are you on your way to gaining all you
love, or killing it off?
Peter:
“Drat that
pesky pageboy, I thought it was one of William's lusty euphemisms ‘I'll have
her page.’ I quite like it as a euphemism though.”
Eleanor:
“It's a
brilliant euphemism, simply brilliant.”
A
page, white , blank and pure. The writer, reader and first time lover
could all be seen as hunters ( hunters of white , white hunters) wanting to
make the first mark on the white page.
[Peter Treanor]
“Can't you
just see the lover/poet...hovering over that pristine page with her (making it
her not him, more potent I reckon ;-) fountain pen, the sharp nib, the ink at
the tip about drop and make its mark. You could write any number of words, make
your handwriting slant, tip over, dot your i’s, cross your t’s. Draw the line
(when you disagree), underline (when passionate), doodle (just for fun). Would
you use both sides of the page? Sometimes you run out of space on a page, and
you think you need a new one— start over with a clean slate. Or maybe the page
changes with age, yellowing, fraying at the edges, and there are reams and
reams of crisp, new pages out there...what to do?”
[Here Peter pointed to some clips from the film Pillow Book which features the human body as the
page for the written word. This, and the commentary that follows, puts us back
in touch with Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Dog.",
“A White Hunter." Part 1 of 3.]
TENDER
BUTTONS, THE MARRIAGE JOURNAL
Eleanor:
“Seeing as
everyone's agreed (am I right?) that these button poems are (among other
numerous things) love notes from G to A, then—well...strictly speaking, they're
entries in a ‘Journal of Marriage.’ Now...please forgive me for seeming to be
cynical, but a ‘marriage journal’ is quite different from a ‘love note’....it
may contain love notes, but it's much more complex than that.
“My next
thought (I'm thinking as I write here) is that marriage is marriage, whatever
your sexual inclination, and so it would be far too simplistic to call this
book of poems a ‘journal of lesbian marriage,’ although it is that of course,
but it's also much more.
“Are these
poems fiction or non-fiction? (that's a rhetorical question). Can we learn
about A & G's relationship from these poems? Yes, but also...not really.
First of all, Alice is the recipient, the passive reader. Secondly, it's in ‘code,’
as all marriages are!
“The reason
I'm thinking of this, is that I'm following a Coursera course on ‘Marriage in
the Movies,’ and the professor lists 7 ‘cinematic marriage problems’ as
follows:
money
infidelity/sex
family
incompatibility
class
addiction
murder
“Now...I reckon we've had
almost all of them pop up in ‘OBJECTS’ [section 1 of Tender Buttons] so far, and now we even have this turn to violence,
what with the nearly crazy hunter. Just first thoughts here, but I thought it
interesting enough to pop into a commentbox...... more sighs last goes.”
TOUCHING BOTTOM NATURE
Allan:
This seems to be the
melancholic's alternative to
he who laughs last
laughs best
In which case
the dog is sanguine
the monkey is choleric
the donkey is phlegmatic
[Allan is referring to an ancient theory about
personality types called the four temperaments.]
Peter:
“and the white
hunter is melancholic, it's his quiet self-analysis that has driven him a
little crazy.”
CATALOGING THE
CHARACTER OF THE LIVING PARTS
Karren [a.k.a.
Steiny] complimented Allan and Peter for their analysis which points back to
Gertrude Stein’s character typing that she called Bottom Nature. Stein used
this concept in writing her long novel The
Making of Americans that preceded (as a written work but not as published work) Tender
Buttons.
Steiny thanks
you, Dear Reader, for risking the dizzying tour through the three-part discussion
of “A Dog." and “A White Hunter.". She also tips her hat to The
Buttons Collective for a labyrinthian journey through these 41 words and especially
to Eleanor Smagarinsky for making visceral that the proceedings of the ModPo
Tender Buttons Massive Open Online Study Group is without a doubt a virtual
opera.
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