SIZING THE BUTTONS BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- A
SHAWL: NUMBER 54
WORD
COUNT......................-
104
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.....................................-
MELLIFLUOUS BUT STICKY
“Is this a
prayer shawl or a fashion statement that masquerades as hat, undercoat and belt
as well as other things?” Karren Alenier
“What
interests me about a shawl is that it is a semi-permeable membrane, full of
holes, like lace.” Mary Armour
A SHAWL.
A shawl is a hat and hurt and a red balloon
and an under coat and a sizer a sizer of talk.
A shawl is a wedding, a piece of wax a
little build. A shawl.
Pick a ticket, pick it in strange steps
and with hollows. There is hollow hollow belt, a belt is a shawl.
A plate that has a little bobble, all
of them, any so.
Please a round it is ticket.
It was a mistake to state that a laugh
and a lip and a laid climb and a depot and a cultivator and little choosing is
a point it.
Surely Miss Stein is up to
something significant with all the subpoems in Section 1 “Objects” that pertain
to things worn on the body or the body itself:
“A Method Of A Cloak.”
“A Long Dress.”
“A Red Hat.”
“A Blue Coat.”
“A Purse.”
“Eye Glasses.”
“A Petticoat.”
“A Waist.”
“A Handkerchief.”
“Colored Hats.”
“A Feather.”
“Shoes.”
“A Shawl.”
“This Is This Dress, Aider.”
and this is not to bypass:
“A
Substance In A Cushion.” which has such words and phrases as costume, tassel, wear it, suit, trimming, sewing, sash
“A
Piece Of Coffee.” Talks about silk,
cotton, ribbon and something
that may be strangely flattering
“Nothing
Elegant.” which seems to have a sensitive leaning toward charm (does this
point to fashion?) and things sewn
“Mildred’s Umbrella.” specifically
mentioning a small sac (possibly a purse) and ribbon
“A
Piano.” mentions button holder
“Chair.”
which elicited extended commentary on what Civil War widows wore
“A
Cloth.”, ample cloth seems to hint at Stein’s ample body
“Malachite.”,
a stone used in jewelry
“Suppose
An Eyes.” that features a white dress,
worn lace, and leather.
“A
Little Called Pauline.” sports such words as dressing, soles, spats, bow, sleeve, feather
The Steiny Road Poet
conjectures that more than half of the 58 subpoems of “Objects” contain some
touchstone to clothing, shoes, wearable accessories, or the body. Because Tender Buttons is a coded love poem from
one woman to another, what covers the body is a logical and important theme for
this work. Clothing, particularly in
Gertrude Stein’s time, represented constriction. Stein came out of the
nineteenth century where women’s fashion was largely about sleeves, collars
with lace, corsets, long skirts and dresses with layers of petticoats as well
as hats, boots, and shawls.
One of the first things that
Gertrude did with her brother Leo after she left her highly regimented life in
the United States was set a new standard for dressing. She and Leo decided they
would have clothes made from brown corduroy fabric, which was soft but durable.
Gertrude wore a corduroy robe held together by a broach. The sister brother
team also decided that sandals were preferable over shoes or boots. Releasing
the body allowed for releasing the mind. Their Harvard teacher William James
taught that to be a genius, one must break the
constriction of habit. Within the study of “A Shaw.”, Steiny saw the connection
of restrictive clothing, especially the uniforms (habits) of women college
students (long skirts, long-sleeved blouses with ties at the neck—mimicking the
shirts and ties worn by the male students,), as a way to hold women back from
achieving creative potential. Those long skirts got in the way. Corsets sapped
a woman’s breath and energy.
Among the
topics elicited from the discussion of “A Shaw.” by the members of The Buttons
Collective were: fashion; wedding, birth
and death traditions; shawl-as-stand-in-for-a-woman; cawl-caul-cowl; card/magic
trick; and grammar, phrase construction, musicality. Here are some highlights
from the discussion:
NINETEENTH
CENTURY FASHION
Tamboura Gaskins:
“From what I
understand, shawls were in fashion in the late 19th century--
The period of the 19th century up to
the 1870s, when the fashion silhouette changed, was known as the "shawl
period" because women in Europe and America wore shawls with almost all
their clothing. At the beginning of that century, shawls were a necessity in a
fashionable woman's wardrobe because dresses were thin and décolleté; it was a
sign of gentility to wear a shawl gracefully.
“In light of
this, I see hat as old hat, or old-fashioned.
So, could hat and hurt mean old-fashioned and insulting?”
SHAWL AS
WOMAN; SHAWL IN WEDDING RITUAL
“A shawl is
mostly associated with a woman's garment, although men in the east do wear
shawls. A shawl could be a stand-in for a woman. And a woman is hurt. In the
next line, I am reminded of weddings in many cultures where the bride and groom
are hidden under a shawl as part of the wedding ritual that culminates the binding or tying of the knot.
CAWL-CAUL-COWL
Mary Armour:
“This
shawl reminds me of the Celtic cawl—babies
born wrapped in a cawl.
Karren Alenier [a.k.a. The Steiny Road Poet]:
“OMG, Mary,
yes but caul in
American English. And look at this: A caul (Latin: Caput
galeatum, literally, helmeted head)
is a piece of membrane that
can cover a newborn's head and face.”
Eleanor Smagarinsky:
“I
googled ‘Gertrude Stein caul’ and Karren's blog popped up!!!”
Perhaps
the word spectacle refers to the wonder of birth, something Stein had
hands-on experience with during her four years of medical training at Johns
Hopkins University. While a spectacle is something extraordinary and
might be deemed ‘a strange or interesting object or phenomenon,’ the process of
giving birth is a natural occurrence among living entities. Therefore Stein
adds that the spectacle is nothing strange but merely a single hurt color. The
Steiny Poet now thinks that ‘A
kind in glass’ could also refer to the transparent amniotic sac in which a
fetus develops and parts of which may coat the baby in a bloody caul as
it enters the world. [from Stepping
on Tender Buttons: “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”]
Karren:
“The
caul can be associated with the amniotic sac and voilà the red
balloon!”
Mary:
“My cawl
is I think a Welsh or Scottish spelling variant. From Wikipedia:
A caul or cowl (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally,
"helmeted head") is a piece of membrane that can
cover a newborn's head and face.[1] Birth with a caul is
rare, occurring in fewer than 1 in 80,000 births. The caul is harmless and is
immediately removed by the physician or midwife upon delivery of
the child.
“The en-caul birth, not to be confused with
the caul birth, occurs when the
infant is born inside the entire amniotic sac. The sac balloons out at birth,
with the amniotic fluid and child remaining inside the unbroken or partially
broken membrane.”
Karren:
“Look at
that—A caul or cowl—here comes the cow again!!
so helmeted
head—hat and hurt.”
Mary:
“Red
balloons, afterbirth, red flags, a psychic cloak, a helmet. A caul bearer is a
person who is born with the caul.”
“In the Middle
Ages, being born with a caul was considered good luck and a sign of greatness.
From the Internet, I’ve drawn this list of some
historic and fictional caulbearers:”
Historical Figures
• Lord Byron "George Gordon, better known as Lord
Byron, was born with a caul and a club-foot
on January 22, 1788, in London."
• Alexander
the Great
• Sigmund
Freud
• Queen
Christina of Sweden I was born with a
caul and only had the face, arms and legs free. My entire body was hairy and I
had a coarse, strong voice. For this reason the midwives who received me
initially believed that I was a boy. They filled the castle with their false
shouts of joy, which for a moment deceived even the king himself . . . but a
profound embarrassment spread among the women when they realized that they had
been mistaken."
• Kahlil
Gibran "The year was 1922, and in
the crowded Syrian-Lebanese immigrant community of Boston's South End, a boy
was born who family and neighbors
knew would be remarkable. He had been born with a caul--that is, with part of
the fetal membrane over his head.”
Fictional Characters:
• David
Copperfield
• Shakespeare's
Hamlet
Mary:
“The
caul is also known as the veil, the hood, or the veil/vale of tears (this last from the Hail Holy Queen prayer).”
There are two types of cauls. One type, which
appears to be the more common of the two, is the thin, transparent amniotic
lining which becomes tightly formed to the infant's head during the
birthing process and is easily removed. The other type, less common, is
the thick, skin-like covering that is looped around the ears. This one
must be carefully removed, as it literally has attachment points on the scalp and
face, and is a second skin. It is said to have the DNA of the child
imprinted.
The caul can appear in one of two
ways:
~Covering the head and face, and/or
looping behind the ears. (This is the most common, or
well-known appearance of caul.)
~Draping over the head and partly down
the torso, as illustrated below. In Germany, this would be called a helmet [Galea] for boys, and in Italy, for girls, a fillet [vitta] or shirt [indusium, camisia]. (This is the lesser-known type of caul.)
“The newborn
child with ears and nostrils plugged with wax, the umbilical cord as a
belt, the red afterbirth, the lacy head shawl imprinted with DNA, a
helmet, a shirt, a shawl concealing and protecting the newborn. The hurt of
leaving the womb, that too.”
Karren:
“Hamlet being born with a caul over his
face, reminds me that this character is famous for his to be or not to be
soliloquy. Stein throughout her work is concerned with whether she would have
been born because she and Leo were replacement children after two of her
parents' children died in infancy.”
THE RED
JOURNEY OF BIRTH
Mary:
“Gertrude as a young medical student would
have witnessed women in labour and giving birth—I read somewhere that the studies
in midwifery or dealing with women giving birth distressed her ( as
happens with many people exposed to this very primal and demanding
experience). Most adult women (certainly the practical Alice) would have been
present when sisters-in-law and female family members were giving birth at
home.
“And many of
us retain birth memories in some way—that first red journey, the wrenching
experience of leaving the womb, the pain and lights and noise, the crying, the
hurt of entering the world. Having the caul torn from our heads.
“Just
as every new born is sized as parents boast of size—to be weighed,
a healthy infant at so many pounds and ounces or kg.”
SIZING/BUILDING
BRONZE SCULPTURES & TALK
Eleanor:
(and a sizer a sizer of talk) I
can't help but notice that Stein is creating something sculptural here.
Garments that cover body parts, a balloon that covers a gas, and a coat that is
worn under something else. Outside and inside, over and under. Later, Stein
writes a piece of wax a little build,
and that phrase in conjunction with these spatial elements reminds me of how bronze sculptures are
made. The original sculpture is transferred into a rubber mold, which
is filled with wax so as to produce an exact positive replica of the
original, which is then covered with a ceramic shell and then
melted off, and the resulting shell is then filled with molten bronze:
Karren:
“Tender
Buttons is a sizer of
talk—it keeps measuring and sorting the standard patter, the socially
acceptable line of thinking.”
THE
SLIP LEADING TO LIFE
Dave Green:
It was a
mistake to state that a laugh and a lip and a laid climb and a depot and a
cultivator and little choosing is a point it.
“A couple
got carried away and the woman ended up pregnant?
“And when you have a child, that's a ticket
to a different way of life.”
BIRTH & DEATH ENTWINED
Eleanor:
“A SHAWL
ASH ALL
“We all end
up, eventually, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ (1662 Book of Common Prayer).
“I do think there's a dark undercurrent
to this poem. Birth and death entwined. The ghosts of unborn babies. A sense of
the poet's own mortality.”
Dave:
Jewish men
are buried with their prayer shawls.
Eleanor:
“Oh!! And Jewish baby boys are often
wrapped in a prayer shawl for their circumcision. Birth and death.”
Jewish Burials
In the Diaspora, Jews are buried
in a plain, wooden casket. The corpse is collected from the place of death
(home, hospital, etc.) by the chevra
kadisha (burial committee). After a ritual washing of the body, the
body of men is dressed in a kittel [shroud] and then a tallit [prayer shawl]. One of the tzitzit is then cut off. In the Land
of Israel, burial is without a casket, and the kittel and tallit
are the only coverings for the corpse. Women are buried in white shrouds only.
DID GERTRUDE
STEIN EVER WEAR A SHAW?
Mary:
“I find it
hard to imagine Gertrude wearing a shawl, I find it easier to visualise
Gertrude watching Alice crochet or embroider a Spanish shawl or Alice
wearing a shawl given to her by Gertrude.”
Claudia Schumann:
“I agree Mary.
Gertrude liked vests. A shawl would have been too feminine or cumbersome to
wear.”
Karren:
“Claudia,
Mary,
Stein is
known for wearing vests. That she appears in a shawl and with Carl Van Vechten
makes me think:
“1) the
photo happened during her lecture tour 1934-1935. Van Vechten was seen with
them a lot and even escorted them on the plane trip to Chicago in maybe
December.
“2) the shawl
doesn't belong to Gertrude. She just borrowed because she was cold.”
SEMI-PERMEABLE
MEMBRANES
Mary:
What
interests me too about a shawl is that it is a semi-permeable membrane, full of
holes, like lace. Fringed and with bobbles perhaps but also like a net
revealing bare shoulders underneath or hair, something airy and open to the
elements.
Pramila:
“Language
opens us up to possibilities. It is also limited. I'm also thinking of
the semi-permeable membrane in which the baby is held so it can absorb the
nutrients of the mother.”
Eleanor:
“I can
almost feel that semi-permeable membrane now.
“Language as
semi-permeable membrane. All the ‘L’ sounds, the lalala, it reminds me suddenly
of babies' first babbling (‘bobble’) - my daughter went through a ‘lalalala’
stage (as an infant) and she'd really work herself up into a frenzy of sound,
very loud. Almost like pushing through a sound barrier, a language barrier,
from sound into meaning...perhaps? From sound into chant into song (which is
poem)?
“We all use
language every day, much like putting on clothes. Language can cover the
surface of our feelings/thoughts, like a hat, or it can expand and grow with
us—from birth to death, like a balloon. Language can be that in-between layer,
protecting us from the harsh elements of life, like an under coat, and all the
time it allows us to quantify all that surrounds us via our speech—a sizer a
sizer of talk.
“But it's really
a shawl - "something airy and open to the elements." Semi-permeable
membrane. A biological phenomenon, miraculous, observable under a microscope,
awaiting discovery and yet all around us, comforting.”
Karren:
bob·ble (bŏb′əl)
v. bob·bled, bob·bling, bob·bles
v.intr.
To bob up and down.
v.tr.
To lose one's grip on (a ball, for
example) momentarily.
n.
A mistake or blunder.
[From bob.]
bobble (ˈbɒbəl)
n
1. a
short jerky motion, as of a cork floating on disturbed water; bobbing movement
2. (Clothing
& Fashion) a tufted ball, usually for ornament, as on a knitted hat
3. any
small dangling ball or bundle
“Doesn't
that last sentence of “A Shaw.” bobble?”
It was a
mistake to state that a laugh and a lip and a laid climb and a depot and a
cultivator and little choosing is a point it.
TICKET: A
JUDGMENT
Pramila:
Pick
a ticket, pick it in strange steps and with hollows. There is hollow hollow
belt, a belt is a shawl.
A
plate that has a little bobble, all of them, any so.
“Now that I
am looking again at these lines, I visualize used tickets people drop on the
station steps that are uneven/worn. These used tickets are punched with hollows
and have bobbles on them. Just as a belt has holes/hollows. Ceramic
plates have bobbles on them depending on how they came out from the kiln.
“And one can
tie a shawl around one's waist if it's too warm to wrap it around your
shoulders.
“All of these
objects point in positive and negative directions--ticket can suggest
adventure, or it can be useless if it is a used one; a belt is useful but at
the same time it can be used to oppress; a shawl is lovely on a woman, but it
becomes oppressive if a woman is expected to wear it; a plate with a bobble can
be seen as imperfect by some and be admired for its authenticity of
craftsmanship by others.”
Eleanor:
“Oh, I do
love that image of the tickets dropped on the station steps. How marvelous.
“And the
objects pointing ‘in positive and negative directions’—aha! big lightbulb
moment for me here...thanks Pramila! There is a back-and-forth movement about
these words with their double associations, and it put me on edge. I couldn't
quite identify why.
“Oh, and
when I just copied your phrase positive
and negative, I was reminded of the sculpture idea again—making a negative
cast, then a positive mold. Back and forth. And perhaps the final sculpture is
one made of blood and tissue and bone—a baby—new life.
“You know,
this is the second time the idea of the admired imperfection in a plate has
come up...just a minute and I'll find the other reference....OK, got it, it was
in ‘Careless
Water.’—
‘No cup is
broken in more places and mended, that is to say a plate is broken and mending
does do that it shows that culture is Japanese......’
Karren:
“I am
offering these two thoughts given how Stein's strategy for the subpoems has
moved more to the abstract side though wrapped in physical items like the
shawl.
#1
"A
poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in
the language-game of giving information.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
#2
“Each thing
is related to every other thing, an arrangement that, in Stein’s lexicon, is
called grammar.
“The roots
of grammar points to letters.”
[Middle English gramere, from Old
French gramaire, alteration of Latin grammatica, from
Greekgrammatikē, from feminine of grammatikos, of letters, from gramma,
grammat-, letter;
see gerbh-in Indo-European roots.]
“Eleanor,
Pramila, and Dave have commented on ticket in various ways. I am
thinking ticket also connotes a judgment, another instance of
morality that Stein is examining and it is also tied to grammar that implies
what is acceptable.
“Here is the
def of ticket:”
1.
a. A
paper slip or card indicating that its holder has paid for or is entitled to a
specified service, right, or consideration: a theater ticket; an airline
ticket.
b. An
e-ticket.
2. A
certifying document, especially a captain's or pilot's license.
3. An
identifying or descriptive tag attached to merchandise; a label.
4. A
list of candidates proposed or endorsed by a political party; a slate.
5. A
legal summons, especially for a traffic violation.
6. The proper or desirable thing: A
change of scene would be just the ticket for us.
7. Informal A means to an
end: "He went to Washington ... to become press secretary ... it was
his ticket out of the Delta" (Nicholas Lamann).
tr.v. tick·et·ed, tick·et·ing, tick·ets
1. To
provide with a ticket for passage or admission: ticket all passengers through
to Amsterdam.
2. To
attach a ticket to; tag. See Synonyms at mark1.
3. To
designate for a specified use or end; destine: funds that have been
ticketed for medical research.
4. To
serve (an offender) with a legal summons: ticket a speeding motorist.
“If Stein is
refusing to punch the White
Hunter's grammatical ticket and creating her own plate of tickets punched
up with a patchwork of hollows that don't size up talk in a conventional way,
it's no wonder the White Hunter is crazy.”
Eleanor:
“Karren,
following on this, it's then doubly interesting ticket is used in two different ways in this poem:”
Pick a
ticket, pick it
Please a
round it is a ticket.
“In that first
segment, it feels like an imperative. Is Stein enacting the way language works?
Every time you are choosing a word (or reading a word), you have to pick a
ticket, there's no choice. There is also an urgency here, and a surprising
clarity in the connection between ticket
and it. It also feels like it might
be part of a dialogue, with one person (the writer?) commanding another (the
reader?) to pick a side. And this hint of dialogue/speech is even stronger in
the next segment, as Please a round
sounds like a fragment of someone's request for something round. But the Please a used here is so soft, in
comparison to the strict commanding tone of Pick
a. I suppose that's often the choice we make in our use of language, should
we persuade forcefully or gently? Women have been 'languaged' to be
people-pleasers (huge generalisation, I know, I'm just exploring) so their
language is different from male language.”
Karren:
“I've been
hanging out with people reading papers on Tender
Buttons at the American Language Association Conference [In Washington, DC,
May 2014]. One interesting tidbit came from Michael Weinstein as follows:”
Tender Buttons deals with stripping
away the habitual, that is, removing the cover from the visible object but
Stein uses language to recover the item. Lots of layers like the clothing worn
in Stein's growing up period—petticoats & corsets, long skirts &
dresses, shirtwaists.
“However,
Michael said the process above all was what mattered to Stein because nothing
can be nailed down. Things keep evolving or transitioning, it's all part of its
currency, its nowness.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment