CARD SHARKS IN THE BUTTONS
BOX
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK
...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- PEELED PENCIL, CHOKE: NUMBER 56
WORD
COUNT......................-
3
STANZA(S)............................-
1
THE SUBPOEM
...................- IT WAS BLACK, BLACK TOOK: NUMBER 57
WORD
COUNT......................-
27
STANZA(S)............................-
2
THE SUBPOEM
...................- THIS IS THIS DRESS, AIDER: NUMBER 58
WORD
COUNT......................-
32
STANZA(S)............................-
2
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.....................................-
CHAOTIC WITH A SHIMMY
“Stein reaches around till she finds what
suits her purpose. And we [Buttons] have learned to do that too.” Karren
Alenier
“If you come to Stein with a
big ego, you won’t get very far at all—you need to work with others.” Eleanor
Smagarinsky
PEELED PENCIL, CHOKE.
Rub her coke.
IT WAS BLACK, BLACK TOOK.
Black ink best wheel bale brown.
Excel lent not a hull house, not a pea
soup, no bill no care, no precise no past pearl pearl goat.
THIS IS THIS DRESS, AIDER.
Aider, why, aider why whow, whow stop
touch, aider whow, aider stop the muncher, muncher munchers.
A jack in kill her, a jack in, makes a
meadowed king, makes a to let.
Talk about
stepping in it, “This Is This Dress,
Aider.” seems like a mined field. Let’s talk about the title first.
TAKING CAREFUL
STEPS IN THE AIDER MEADOW
Allan Keeton:
THIS IS
THIS DRESS, AIDERè “This is distress, aid her.”
Steiny asks, could
Aider be Ada, the character and title of Stein’s first portrait (written in
1910), which was about Alice Toklas? This seems likely because until Alice-Ada
took flight from San Francisco and her family, her whole life was devoted for
caring for (aiding) her father, brother,
and grandfather. She was assigned this role when her mother died of cancer. Interestingly,
the Ada portrait dwells on Ada exchanging “tender letters” with her father who
wanted her to come back, but Ada was not willing because she had become
“happier than anyone else who was living then.” (Maybe these tender letters
gives the title Tender Buttons a more
fraught meaning.)
Finding Stein
allowed Toklas to choose whom she would aid for the rest of her life. However,
the Aider subpoem might be similar to the situation Alice had faced in giving her
commitment to Stein instead of her father (the meadowed king) and her brother
(jack in kill her). According to the Ada portrait there were other family
members who also lived with Ada’s family and that was taking its toll on her.
These interlopers were perhaps the munchers of the Aider subpoem.
Here is a
read that incorporates Alice’s backstory. Aider, why, aider why
whow—Alice, why aid
me. whow stop touch, aider whow, aider stop the muncher,
muncher munchers—Tell
me the why and how as we touch or maybe you would prefer that we stop so you
can tell me about the family members who took advantage of you. A
jack in kill her—There
was your brother, still living at home and not looking for a wife and a
jack in, makes a meadowed king—your ageing father worried about his son and each of them were makes
a to let—taking a
share of you.
WHAT DO THE
LETTERS SAY?
Anagrammatic
and sound variations of the title could be:
This Is Distress,
I Read.
This Is Distress,
A Ride.
This Is This
Dress, Aired.
This Ist His
Dress, Ada.
Shit Is Shit.
Dress Aired.
Next let’s
look at: Aider, why, aider why whow, whow stop touch, aider whow,
aider stop the muncher, muncher munchers.
From
the Oxford English
dictionary regarding whow:
whou,
whough(e, whouh, whow(e, variants
of how, howe int.1
• C. 1425 Quhow: see whew int.
• 1542 Udall Erasm. Apoph. 314
― Whough, saieth he, half my brother’s bodye is more then the whole.
• 1598 R. Bernard tr. Terence,
Phormio ɪɪɪ. iii, ― How much money need you? speake. But thirtie
poundes. Thirtie! Whow.
• 1615 Brathwait Strappado 129
― Whou Billie whou, what faire has thou bin at?
• 1627 W. Hawkins Apollo Shroving ɪɪ.
iv. 33 ― He answered me nothing but whough, pugh.
• 1815 Scott Guy M. xlv,
― ‘Eh whow! Eh whow!’ ejaculated the honest farmer, as he looked
round upon his friend’s miserable apartment.
So †
whowb(e (in quots. as sb.; cf. howbub, hubbub).
• 1600 W. Watson Decacordon ᴠɪɪ.
x. (1602) 217 ― They hissed him out with whoubs & hoo-bubs.
1600 W.
Watson Decacordon ɪx. viii. 327 [see how, howe int.1].
This gives the
details on how old the word whow is
and how it doubles as an interjection.
CHEWING THE
FAT & THE SCREAM
Muncher has a variety meanings. The Free
Dictionary says that a muncher is “a chewer” who makes a loud noise chewing
presumably food and that this chewer may be doing it with pleasure. Could this
be Stein enjoying Alice’s cooking? Since the next section of Tender Buttons is called “Food,” this
may be experienced as Stein cueing the reader for the next food-oriented
subpoems. However, since Stein’s publisher set the order of the sections and
“Objects” was written last, the cueing is only accidental.
Peter Teanor:
“Muncher could be eating or mouth or a grazing animal
(cow, horse?). And stop the muncher
seems like someone trying to stop eating or the mouth or an animal. Is there a
ride, on a horse? And are the muncher munchers people/animals who eat the
muncher? If a horse is the muncher (munching on grass (leaves of
grass?—[Whitman’s Leaves of Grass?]))
are the muncher munchers people who eat horse? The French are partial to a bit
of horse (or so us Brits are led to believe)
.”
Allan:
“According
to the Urban Dictionary:”
Muncher,
Munch, Munches, Munchers. An individual or group of homosexual nature (male or
female). A shortened term stemming from phrases such as carpet muncher (referring to lesbians) And Pillow munchers—referring to homosexual men.
Steiny asks
who is the ultimate muncher? How about the artist who created “The Scream”?
Surely Stein was aware of Edvard Munch and his work.
Edvard Munch (Norwegian: 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose
intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the
main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly
influenced German Expressionism in the
early 20th century. One of his most well known works is The Scream of 1893.
ADDRESSING THE
DRESS AGAIN
The last
stanza A jack in kill her, a jack in,
makes a meadowed king, makes a to let evoked lots of discussion which
included card games, the King of England’s property, violence, sex, and
rentals.
Eleanor Smagarinsky:
Screech, that’s Steiny
stopping suddenly to notice that this homophonic translation of a to let to a toilette puts this phrase
in touch with the title of this subpoem— THIS IS THIS DRESS, AIDER.
|
toi·lette (twä-l
 t )
n.
1. The act or process of dressing or grooming oneself;
toilet.
2. A person's dress or style of dress.
3. A gown or costume.
DECONSTRUCTING MEADOWED
KING
Peter:
“meadowed-
me a do
wed (is ‘a’ Alice?)
me, alice
do wed.
|
From the phrase meadowed king, Peter deconstructs the word meadowed but one must not
overlook that Stein considers herself the male partner and the king of the
house (or should Steiny say King of the Took/Rook?).
Could it be that Stein is repeating
A jack in is pointing to ejaculation? Could it be that entire
subpoem “This Is This Dress, Aider.” describes sex between Stein and
Toklas?
Now back to how Dave Green
responded to Eleanor’s interpretation of makes a
to let.
Dave Green:
“to let in the sense of letting a room or a contract? If a jack is put in ‘a,’ she will share a room with you
or make room for you in her life, award you a personal contract, a pledged
relationship?
makes a meadowed king—sounds Shakespearean. I like the sound
of it.
Eleanor:
“This
killing at the end. Of course, it's sexual. But still, there's more to it.
There's violence/risk/danger, and it's more complex than just a fetish, because
homosexuality really was (still is, in many countries) dangerous. People's
lives are at stake, any way you look at it. Living like this perhaps felt like
living with some sort of poison which you were born with, in your very body—your
desire threatening your life. This made me look back at the word ‘lace,’
perhaps it could also refer to the lacing of a person - constraining, beating
or poisoning.
“From ‘A
LEAVE.’
soldier has
a worn lace a worn lace of different sizes that is to say if he can
read,
“Is she
[Stein] warning us?
“From ‘A
LITTLE CALLED PAULINE.’
A little
lace makes boils.
“These have
not been ‘pretty little poems,’ and there's a threatening violence throughout
(it's in the grammar somehow). I believe this is one of the factors that lead
to Stein's readers feeling angry and defensive.”
Karren:
meadowed
king
“Dave said this phrase
sounded Shakespearean so I thought I would look and see what I could find. I
found King's Meadow, which seems fraught given Henry VIII grabbed this land
from the monks. Would we call them munchers?”
King's Meadow is
a park in Reading, Berkshire, England, located next to
the River Thames.
It stretches from the Coal Woodland (so-called because it used to be the site
of a coal heap [1])
to King's Meadow Road near Reading Bridge. King's
Meadow is visible from the railway when entering or leaving Reading railway
station from the eastern side.
King's Meadow was a possession of Reading Abbey and
became owned by the King after the dissolution of
the monasteries. In 1869 the town of Reading purchased 12 acres
(4.9 ha) of the meadow as a recreation ground.[2] This
area has long been used as the site of a variety of public events such as
Reading market, a racecourse, Reading shows and fairs.
The Dissolution of
the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression
of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes
between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England,
Wales and Ireland, appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and
provided for their former members and functions. He was given the authority to
do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy,
passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating
England from Papal authority,
and by the First
Suppression Act (1536) and the Second
Suppression Act (1539).
Allan:
“A meadowed
king sounds like a king who is out to pasture,
getting old
and lacking vitality & power.
“A jack
in kill her, a jack in, makes a meadowed king,
Her killing leads to the king's meadowing.
“Whow didst
thou king come upon this meadowing?
A knave
put his jack in and killed her.”
Peter:
“Wasn’t there
a meadow in another poem a few back?
or meadow—me adieu, a goodbye/ farewell.
she's
jacking it in, killing it, saying goodbye, making a vacancy, a ‘to let.’”
Eleanor:
“Peter,
you're right about meadow being in
another poem, goodness!”
Water
astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.
“So so good.
You see, this is one of the poems Al [Filreis] and the [ModPo] Gang close read
(if memory serves me right), and remember Amaris [a ModPo Teaching Assistant]
talking in a separate live webcast about how words should be like water, not
like furniture being moved around a room. So ....
“Stein's
writing (there's the W again) is ‘astonishing and difficult’ but it will bring
you to a wedding, to love, and a stroke—not only of the pen, but a powerful,
erotic stroking....which is a stroke of genius as we swim through the water
raining.
“At this
point in our study, I think we're swimming laps at a great pace!! (oh no, now
‘swimming laps’ is taking on an erotic frisson, is there no end? Apparently
not!).”
Karren:
Allan, I
think based on Henry VIII history that the meadowed king became a greedy
king. The king stopped the followers (munchers--sheep) from feeding on the meadow
that had belonged to the Catholic Church.
I find it
down right perverse that Gertrude is speaking in Medieval English—whow which is
so counter to her stance on creating the present moment, opening the window of
now, with whow. But I have seen her do this before. She steals back to the
distant past to encode her message and then folks stand around and scratch
their heads. Why? Because the head scratchers Xpect Stein to be consistent. She
just isn't. She reaches around till she finds what suits her purpose.
“And we have
learned to do that too! So why not, a meadowed king, a king out to pasture.
There's a content king, no? but oops, Allan, the king gets jacked. It's a funny
kind of parlor game, those cards don't have the value you expect.”
Allan:
“Karren,
Why?
Because the head scratchers Xpect Stein to be consistent. She just isn't.
“It’s a good
thing that we didn't know that we were supposed
to expect
consistency, at least not in meaning 1) below,
but perhaps
in meaning 2). There is a feel to the way
the words
like water hold together by falling upon
and reaching
around each other.
con·sist·en·cy
kənˈsistənsē/
noun
• 1.
conformity in the application of something, typically
that which is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness.
"the
grading system is to be streamlined to ensure greater consistency"
|
synonyms
|
uniformity, constancy, regularity, evenness, steadiness, stability,
equilibrium;
|
• 2.
the way in which a substance, typically a liquid, holds
together; thickness or viscosity.
"the sauce has the consistency of
creamed butter"
|
synonyms:
|
It's a
funny kind of parlor game, those cards don't have the value you expect.
Absolutely.
Eleanor:
“So perhaps
the (in)consistency of our group's dynamics mimics the (in)consistency of Stein's
writing. Our different histories, life experiences, personalities, locations—they
form a liquid. We ebb and flow as do Stein's words. The system to pointing
demands an eclectic community.
“I suppose
this method of study is more akin to scientific work—you have a team of
scientists in a big lab. This is in stark contrast to the solitary academic who
works alone in a corner of the library. If you come to Stein with a big ego,
you won't get very far at all - you need to work with others. So when brand-new
students arrive at the Stein chapter in ModPo, their confusion and frustration
is to be expected—it's as if they were told to research a mysterious phenomenon
but not supplied with a lab. They basically wonder around the forums looking
for a room with some counters and beakers and Bunsen burners. They need to join
a research team. The Button Lab!! Motto could be ‘Join the team—grab a test
tube and a copy of the Periodic Table and start experimenting.’ In scientific
research, no hypothesis is too far-fetched, no experiment is silly, and you
never know when one thing will lead to another.”
CARD GAMES
& RIDING THE COW
Karren:
“Could we
talk about parlor games again?
“Let's
picture a raunchy casino like one you might find in Vegas but I bet there were
raunchy casinos in Stein's time, maybe in Monte Carlo? Who knows about this?
“So we are
all sitting under hot lights sweating with cigs hanging out of our mouths,
telling the dealer to hit (touch) me and then stop. Meanwhile the casino is
munching up my money, our money.
“Then I get
a Jack, a killer card and another Jack which puts the king out to pasture
(meadowing the king) giving Alice something to tell (I say Alice tell it, tell
that story a to let==>a
(Alice) tell it). So there is Alice aiding me in my distress. OK,
not me but Gertrude, Gertrude as the card shark overcoming the munchers.”
Peter:
“I’m sure
she would like this game
[euchre], popular at the time
with slang
in it that includes:
• Milking the Cow: A celebratory gesture done when a
team is in the barn (have 9 points) in which one partner interlocks his fingers
with his thumbs pointing down while the other pretend the thumbs are udders and
milk them.
• Opening the Barn: Similar to Milking the Cow, this is a
celebratory gesture done when a team receives their eighth point in which one
partner puts their hands together, fingertips touching, and the other partner
"opens" the hands.
Riding
the Cow into the Sunset:
In the same spirit as Milking the Cow and Opening the Barn, players who win the
game will ride the cow into the sunset. Both partners will put their hands
above their heads and wave in a circular motion while slightly bouncing up and
down to simulate riding a horse waving a lasso.
I can just hear her and Alice
roaring with laughter at the in joke as they ride the cow till sunset ( oh and
cows are munchers too).”
Karren:
Peter, did
you see this:
The
highest-ranking card in euchre is the Jack of the trump suit (called 'The Right
Bower' or 'Right') …
how did you
find euchre?
Peter:
“Yes I saw
that the jack trumps/kills the king. And the whole game is farmyard themed so
putting the king to meadow seems to fit too.
“I found it
with the help of the Google fairy, random words like jack, king, game,1900,
etc., into the digital cauldron and let chance and the oracular algorithms do
their crazy thing. There is a French version of it mentioned that is for 2
people to play too. I thought they would be playing the games that were being
played in Paris as well as ones that they'd brought from home. I don’t think
they would be able to resist the cow business. Who could really?”
Before
Steiny picks up her lantern and moves on down the road from the last subpoems
of section 1 “Objects,” she wants to return to the elemental objects of Tender Buttons and that is, the letters
that make up the words and grammar of Stein’s renewed language. In particular,
Stein focuses on A, which is also The One, her life partner Alice B. Toklas.
Sure, Stein has entertained us with her card tricks and tongue twisters but, in
the end, this is a love story about communication and partnership. Eleanor
Smagarinsky has found the perfect way to close this discussion, which streams
from the last words of “This Is This Dress, Aider.” (makes a to let):
LET -
LET HER - LETTER
“Again,
Roland Barthes”:
The writer of pleasure (and his reader)
accepts the letter; renouncing bliss, he has the right and the power to express
it: the letter is his pleasure; he is obsessed by it, as are all those who love
language...
“Stein
perfectly combines the pleasures of the body and of the text here. Aiding and
abetting her partner (Ada) in the ‘crime’ of blissful sex, aiding and abetting
her reader in the ‘crime’ of blissful text. She's really taking us to the
limits in this last poem. Kill us off, Gertrude, go on, and then renew us—LET.
Barthes:
The text is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me.
So yes,
Steiny invites you to join her in the next ModPo forum when
in the fall of 2014 she plans to resume Tender
Buttons studies. The ModPo course is free and open to all as is the Tender Buttons studies that take place
in the ModPo Discussion Forums.
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