LACE & EYELETS IN THE
BUTTONS BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK
...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- A
LEAVE: NUMBER 52
WORD
COUNT......................-
24
STANZA(S)............................-
1
THE SUBPOEM
...................- SUPPOSE
AN EYES: NUMBER 53
WORD
COUNT......................-
107
STANZA(S)............................-
6
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.....................................-
HYPER ALERT
“What is the object of Gertrude
Stein’s game?” Karren Alenier
“Instantly,
this entire poem now morphed into a very highly charged sex romp, open for
business, 24/7, shoe-shining, butt-waxing, soldiering, lacy undergarments.” Eleanor Smagarinsky
Now Steiny offers the
low-culture highlights from the associations made by The Buttons Collective in Stepping
on Tender Buttons: “A Leave.", “Suppose An Eyes." Part 1 of 3,
starting with the category sex and gaming but blending in other topics, including the politics of publishing.
PURR PUSSY SADDLES OF
MUTTON
While Peter
had found the sexual tension of “A Leave.” and how to release it and Karren called
attention to the connection between parlor games and sex, Allan Keeton jumped in referencing a phrase from “Suppose An
Eyes.”, followed by a definition of pussy
taken from a website with The Etymology of Slang Sexual Terms:
“with rubbed purr as rubbed her (&
made her purr)”
However, he didn’t stop
there but also discovered the Barrison
Sisters a vaudeville act performing in the United States and Europe from
about 1891 to 1900 which featured a dance where they played the audience by
asking if they wanted to see [the sisters’] pussy. Upon raising her skirt, each
sister revealed a live kitten secured in her undergarment over the crotch.
Allan also added a
sexually suggestive image to match Stein’s:
Then there
are the sales ladies
& their
saddles of mutton.
“Just taking
the line by itself:
Little
sales ladies little sales ladies little saddles of mutton.
“I'm
tempted to give it a feminist reading, but I can't read the tone...is Stein
appreciating the selling of the cuts of meat? Is she buying and consuming?
Little
sales of leather and such beautiful beautiful, beautiful beautiful.
“It's
creepy. She practically has blood dripping down her face, no? So then I work
myself back up the poem as there's a lot of rubbing and purring and then one
line up we have:
Go
red go red, laugh white.
“Instantly,
this entire poem now morphed into a very highly charged sex romp, open for
business, 24/7, shoe-shining, butt-waxing, soldiering, lacy undergarments.”
OF MEAT
& MILK
Karren replied:
“After
having sat with USDA meat inspectors and hearing them talk about the horrors of
the meat packing industry, I practically gagged on eating meat for a week and
now seeing Gaga in her meat dress…yuk. But somehow none of this quite changes
my habits. Even the image Allan has posted above which is mightily unappetizing.
Well, it's also rather sexual looking, maybe like the private parts of a woman.
“This makes
me think that maybe underneath of ‘Suppose An Eyes.’ might there be some
discussion of what is kosher? If
you think of the meat being in the black (or blackening) category and the
dairy/milk being in the white category...
“That
business about the soldier and his worn lace makes me think of his shoes where
maybe a cat is purring about his feet for some milk? Is Stein the soldier and
Toklas the cat (Pussy)?
“The red
referring, as Eleanor put it, to bloody meat. The laughing cow,
white—milk.
“AND are
women who produce milk kosher? Yes, but not when they bleed. They are
off-limits to their husbands when they menstruate and considered unclean.”
Allan:
“Yes, the line—
Little
sales ladies little sales ladies little saddles of mutton.
“could be
read as prostitution,
especially
juxtaposed with that picture of a saddle of mutton.
“Lack of
menstrual blood means soon there will be milk.”
READING IN THE RED: A GAME
OF SNOOKER
Eleanor:
“Until now I
didn't see the read in red.
“Karren—you
mentioned parlour games earlier in thread, and so now I'm thinking of snooker. I googled it, and it seems to me that the balls are all
Stein's colours.”
Peter:
Snooker:
Noun
[Mass Noun]
A game played with cues on
a billiard table in which the players use a cue ball (white) to pocket the
other balls (fifteen red and six coloured) in a set order: [as
modifier]: a snooker hall, a snooker tournament.
More Example Sentences:
[Count Noun] A
position in a game of snooker or pool in which a player cannot make a direct
shot at any permitted ball: He needed a snooker to have a chance of winning the
frame.
More Example Sentences:
Verb [with
object]
Subject (oneself or one’s
opponent) to a snooker: He potted yellow and green, and then snookered Davis on
the brown. Hendry led, but then snookered himself.
British Leave (someone)
in a difficult position; thwart:
I managed to lose my flat
keys—that was me snookered.
US Trick, entice, or
trap:
They were snookered
into buying books at prices that were too high.
• British Leave
(someone) in a difficult position; thwart:
• US Trick,
entice, or trap:
“This is
exactly the game Stein is playing with us!”
Peter:
“Her weapon
consists of a butt cap, a butt, a shaft collar and a shaft, very masculine,
very GS, I think she chose it carefully and deliberately.
“She uses
red a lot, lots of red balls in snooker—I wonder how many reds she pots?
“I wonder if
the number of times she uses the other colours corresponds to their point value
in the game? yellow (2 points), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6) and
black (7) Or if she alternates red with other colours as in the game.
“She talks
of tables a lot, is this the snooker table?
And it's
played with a cue (or cues if there are two playing), a hint or
indication!”
Eleanor:
Karren:
“Here
is text from restoring a
snooker cue. There
is a lot of talk about bringing back the black details and reducing the white.
Apparently these parlor games are taken very seriously and the care of their
cues seem rather sexual.”
I am sure a lot of you have
accidentally sanded down your ash shaft to the point of losing all the grain
fillers. The shaft looks "white" and no matter how many times
you oil your shaft the grains are never dark enough again.
You may have also come across this
situation with some very old cues whereas the dark grain fillers are missing in
some areas leaving behind some dents and broken spots along the grains on the
shaft.
Aurora ash grain sealer not only fills
your ash grains and darkens them, it also seals the open pores and protects
your shaft against moisture.
Some people use shoe polish,
ebony dust, wood filler, black wood stain, ink...etc. but these products will
come off over time and do not necessarily offer protection against humidity.
FINDING
THREE LIVES IN LIFE POOL
Karren:
“I looked up
the history of snooker [Wikipedia] and see LIFE POOL and BLACK POOL as a precursor.”
Life pool was
a form of pocket
billiards (pool) mainly played in the 19th century. It was
one of several pool games that were popular at this time (so called because
gamblers pooled
their bets at the start of play). The object of the
game was to be the last player left "alive" and therefore scoop the
pool (take the winnings). Each player had three "lives" to
begin with and would lose one when another player potted their coloured ball which was designated to them at the
start of the game. Once a player lost their three lives, they were declared
"dead", i.e. out of the game. The game continued in this way until
there was only one player left, who was declared the winner. Around 1875, life
pool merged with black
pool to form the new game of snooker, today one of
the most popular cue
sports in the world.
Black pool was
a form of pocket
billiards (pool) mainly played in the 19th century. It was
one of several pool games that were popular during this time. It was called
this because gamblers pooled their bets at the start of play. This game had
fifteen red balls that were racked in a triangle, as in snooker today but
without the six colour balls. There was also a black ball that was either placed on the centre spot or what is now the black spot in snooker. Each player extracted
winnings from their opponents for each ball they potted. Potting the black ball
meant receiving additional winnings. Around 1875, black pool was merged
with life pool to form the new game of snooker,
today one of the most popular cue
sports in the world.
“What interests
me is thinking about THE OBJECT of the game. How was Stein playing with object of the game?
“Next, Three
Lives is all you get to win at Life Pool. Stein's first published book (albeit
self-published) was Three Lives (1909). Leo Stein suggested to Gertrude
that she attempt translation of Flaubert's Trois Contes (Three Tales)
to improve her French. Well, she rolled her own, but she did admire Flaubert's
stories and there are nods to them like a parrot in her story The Good Anna.
“She sent
her book to various well known writers including William James, her Harvard
professor (also Leo's teacher before Gertrude) and he said it was ‘a fine
new kind of realism.’ The book was not a literary success but it was talked
about in lit circles. Writer Israel Zangwill wrote, ‘... I always thought [Stein] was such a
healthy minded young woman, what a terrible blow this must be for her poor dear
brother.’"
STEIN
SNOOKERS HER CRITICS
So Karren thought it over some more and
came back with:
“What occurs
to me after thinking about the Life Pool- three lives-snooker is that Tender
Buttons snookers the traditional writers. These writers, and
especially her critics, have no idea what she is doing.
“Here is how
Stein this sets up:
“Now
remembering that Tender Buttons was
published May 1914 and the "Objects" section was written last:
“Suppose
it Tender Buttons is within a gate the arena of public
criticism
which
open is open at the hour of closing summer Stein's publisher had to rush the publication process to
get the new book to the critics before they won't on summer holidays
that is
to say it is so. What
the critics said mattered to the success of the book.
“The rest of
this subpoem can be read-through as Stein deriding the old ways of the book
business. Look at those end lines, here's what I see:
Suppose
a collapse in rubbed purr, in rubbed purr get.
purr get ==> Purgeth
Purgeth means,
To Cleanse:
specifically, to prune.
In the garden, 'pruning' is
a very important activity.
There are several reasons
for
pruning, such as to: correct
or repair
damage; shape; train;
encourage flower and
fruit production; create a
pleasing form;
bring roots and leaves into
balance;
thin out dense growth to let
in light
and air; etc. Our
Father, the
Master Gardener, knows
just
how, and when, all of
His 'branches'
need
pruning.
The
Christian take on Purgeth is:
I am the true Vine,
and my Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that
beareth not fruit
He taketh
away:
and every branch that
beareth fruit,
He purgeth it,
that it may bring forth more fruit.
John 15:1-2
“So
here is Stein setting up a what-if statement—suppose praise (rubbed purr)
is rubbed out (purged)?
Little
sales ladies little sales ladies little saddles of mutton.
“Then
those sheepishly sales ladies who are ridden by the ruling white males of the
literary world (white
hun(t)-hers) can
Little
sales of leather and such beautiful beautiful, beautiful beautiful.
“make their
sales of other books bound in leather that appeal to the senses and are
excellent beyond compare. And perhaps these are the little known books
like Stein's Tender Buttons.”
COW—LEATHER—BOOK
COVER
Eleanor:
“I never
thought about leather being the cover of a book, until now. You open and close
a book, and ‘he can read, he can read’ now sounds ironic. Reading GS makes
people see red, or blush.”
Karren:
“EL, I think
it is historically interesting that Stein has singled out a soldier to be her
reader. This warrior of the page—Stein—chooses soldiers as her readers and
those are the readers she wants to impress so much that they are silenced or
shamed or maybe even angry (blushing or bursting red faced).
“Also now
I'm thinking that leather is tied not only to books but back to cow! if the cow
also represents something sexual or something conceptual… See where I'm going
with this? Stein is such a uniter of objects and ideas!!”
Once again Steiny
is going to pause to quote Walt Whitman’s poem “I sing the body electric.”
I SING the
Body electric;
|
|
The armies
of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
|
|
They will
not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
|
|
And
discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
|
This time
Steiny quotes Whitman to show his use of the word armies which in the context of his poem refers to groups of people
Whitman is celebrating. Stein also does not seem to be using the word soldier in the sense of military or war
but as body of consequence.
LETTERS, THE
SEAT OF POWER
Eleanor:
“The marbling of
leather on book covers reminds me
of the marbling of meat.
[INSERT
IMAGE]
“Perhaps
black letters "blacken" the pristine white of the page -
"signs" on a white dress. An ADDRESS to the reading public.
“I read that
she was very specific in her requirements for the page colour and print of her
children's book ‘The World Is
Round,’ and I imagine she would be
absolutely pedantic about the design of books, generally. The physicality of
the book is something that's suddenly popped up here, perhaps, in parallel to
the themes that she tackles in the writing itself. And now I see that we have
‘Book.’ still to come, interesting that there is no ‘A’ in front of it.”
Karren:
“El, think
of black letters blackening the pristine white page.
And look at
the definition of 'seat' where I have bolded (blackened).
________________________________________________________________
This makes letters (that which is blackened on the white page)
the seat of power!
seat (sēt)
n.
1. Something, such as a chair or bench,
that may be sat on.
2.
a. A place in which one may sit.
b. The right to occupy such a place or a
ticket indicating this right: got seats for the concert.
3. The part on which one rests in
sitting: a bicycle seat.
4.
a. The buttocks.
b. The part of a garment that covers the
buttocks.
5.
a. A
part serving as the base of something else.
b. The surface or part on which another
part sits or rests.
6.
a. The place where something is located or
based: The heart is the seat of the emotions.
7. A place of abode or residence,
especially a large house that is part of an estate: the squire's country
seat.
8. Membership in an organization, such as
a legislative body or stock exchange, that is obtained by appointment,
election, or purchase.
9. The manner of sitting on a
horse: a fox hunter with a good seat
Allan:
“I thought
that perhaps blackening was some sort of protectant coating, like whitewashing,
but I could not find a reference.
“Blackening
is an alchemical process (the nigredo)
in which the
substance ferments and suffers a
necessary
and painful death as a precursor to
rebirth as
the philosopher's stone.
“Why the
seats would need this,
I do not
know.
“But
blackening brings up whitewashing & its attendant coverups.
In America
black & white
always
connotes race.
“Black seats
& white dresses.”
Claudia Schumann:
All the
seats are needing blackening.
“To me it
sounds like maybe the seats are leather and like shoes they need polishing. So
in the old days if you wanted to polish your shoes you would use shoe polish
which was the color of the shoes. I have this phrase in my mind boot blacking which means to shine
shoes.”
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