THE SUBBOOK ...................-
FOOD
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
Mutton
WORD COUNT (Total)……...-
534
STANZA(S)............................-
13
—Stanzas 1-6
THE
LEADER........................-
THE STEINY ROAD POET
“Mutton.” is
the second subpoem of Tender Buttons
section 2 Food. Like “Roastbeef.”, the first subpoem of Food, Stein is choosing a meat as her
title and a tough meat at that. While eating mutton isn’t the main through line
of this subpoem, the choice is a curious one since Americans do not eat it and
Stein bills herself as American writer.
The Buttons
Collective begins with the first six stanzas of “Mutton.”, which has a 165-word
count, including the title. Among the topics addressed in this post are:
Stein as a student; sheep and lambs as saturated symbols; Mutton Quad; mutton
as echo of button; printer’s loupe and seeing; ruminating students; students,
pupils and dilation; Stein teaching her readers to see; and sexual innuendo.
MUTTON.
A letter which
can wither, a learning which can suffer and an outrage which is simultaneous is
principal.
Student,
students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
Hate rests
that is solid and sparse and all in a shape and largely very largely. Interleaved
and successive and a sample of smell all this makes a certainty a shade.
Light curls
very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a subject.
Change a
single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it expresses
nausea. Like a very strange likeness and pink, like that and not more like that
than the same resemblance and not more like that than no middle space in
cutting.
An eye
glass, what is an eye glass, it is water. A splendid specimen, what is it when it
is little and tender so that there are parts. A centre can place and four are
no more and two and two are not middle.
“Mutton is
evidently some type of fancy meat—and the piece seems to have little to do with
meat. I am trying to do metapoetics on it.” Judy Meibach
THE LETTER THAT WITHERS, LIGHT THAT FAILS, FOUR
NO MORE
The Steiny Road Poet ventures that these six
stanzas might address Stein’s last days as a student at Johns Hopkins Medical
School. In stanza 2, Stein establishes that students are in this landscape and
they seem to be kind and ruminating on what is given to them. However, in
stanza 3, Stein addresses hate, which is substantial (solid) though distributed
in a scattered way (sparse). This hate stinks (a sample of smell) and casts a
shadow (shade). The letter which
can wither was commented on in the ModPo discussion forum as follows:
Karren
Alenier:
“Stein could have gotten a piece of correspondence that threw her
off. Either a letter of reprimand from school or a letter of rejection from her
love interest May Bookstaver.” [The withering letter from May would have come
while Stein was at Johns Hopkins and this letter is said to have been what
pushed her over the edge to the decision to leave medical school without
achieving her degree.]
About stanza 4— Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than
soup. This is not a subject.—Steiny
offers that Stein is seeing a curve (curl) from the light in which case the
light might be her education, something that nourishes like soup. However, this
curving light or insight is not on the curriculum and therefore not a subject
to be studied.
Stanza 5 with
words like change, hurriedly, express, nausea, cutting if applied to Stein’s departure
from Johns Hopkins indicates upsetting action. Other words in stanza 5—very strange likeness, pink, same resemblance, and the
repetition of like four times could
be associated with same sex preference relative to female relationships given
the word pink, a color typically associated with girls and women.
Stanza 6 could
be seen as Stein the scientist with her eye to a microscope examining small
things, which have turned out to be tender and in various parts. The four that
are no more could be those years at medical school and so what should add up in
that formula of two and two doesn’t get to be that safe place (middle) between
the extremes.
Now let’s get
into the details and hear from others discussing these stanzas.
SHEEP TALK:
PHYSICS, PERCEPTION & READING STEIN
Andrew S. Aguinaldo:
“Perhaps students figure in this discourse because they are
lambs. Sheep are saturated symbols (Bible, idiomatic expressions), and maybe
the idea is to cut into it, find something new through the trademark
multiperspectival Steinian take.”
Here Steiny will interrupt because the lamb
is also a saturated symbol probably best known in Western literature as a
sacrifice because of its innocence and purity. In Christianity, Jesus is known
as the Lamb of God, a name bestowed by John the Baptist. And the students of “Mutton.”
could indeed be sacrificing innocence by what is learned. So maybe students
start out as lambs but progress to something tougher. I hesitate to call them
sheep since that indicates those that
follow instead of thinking on their own so maybe the students eventually
become something hard to chew or mutton?
Aguinaldo:
“The line Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than
soup could refer
to the coat of the living sheep, the smoke of the soup, perhaps the baby curls
on very young, impressionable kids. I'm thinking of light too, in the curvature
of time-space the subject matter of Einstein.
“Or light, perhaps, means perspectival lines? Perhaps she is
cuing us (again, anew) how best to read her work, another, more intricate way
of putting slant-of-light or angle or (much more contemporary) spin.
“The last sentence This
is not a subject is nice, approachable and forbidding all at once. Does it
mean that we should not take her words academically? That she has some aversion
to that? Or could she mean that light is to be seen as (or also as) adjective.
“Or is
‘This’ itself not a subject, esp. a this at that is itself, not taken to
refer to anything except its placement?”
Steiny notes here that Andrew raises a lot
complex associations dealing with physics, perception, and how to read Stein
without settling on any one approach. Certainly this is indicative of the
dimensionality Stein brings to the reader.
MUTTON QUAD
OR PRINTER’S CODE
Peter Treanor:
“I’ve been
looking at different uses of the word mutton,
and came up with mutton quad which
was a slang word used in printing and type setting. It has to do with the
height/width of letters in print setting. It’s related to the em (M) in a way I
don’t really understand. But was interested that it was called a mutton quad
when there is talk of four (quad) in the poem and two and two, and not being
central, and lots of other terms which seems like they could be related to
printing and letters/lettering too.”
Em-quad is also a metal spacer used in printing presses. It is referred
to by this name because it is composed of a square one em on each side. In
old-fashioned printing presses, this allowed the insertion of an em space ( ) between other type. It is also occasionally referred to as a mutton
quad.
Aguinaldo
answered:
“I
think stanza 1 and the middle part of stanza 3 agrees with you, Peter. Stanza 5
very strongly, I think:”
Change a
single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it
expresses nausea (space,
blankness?)... and not more like that than no middle space in
cutting.
Steiny notes that mutton quad according to dictionary.com is a code term in printing coined to
differentiate the pronunciation of em (M) quad from en (N) quad but we might
have a problem here since this resource says the term came into use 1935-40.
Hold on! Steiny found this in http://findwords.info/term/mutton
1871 Amer. Encycl.
Printing (ed. Ringwalt), *Mutton Quad, a slang term, in English
printing-offices, for em quad.
OF MUTTON AND BUTTONS
Next, Treanor looked at: A centre can
place and four are no more and two and two are not middle.
“That M in more
in the sentence above is in the middle/centre of the sentence. There are 27
letters either side of it!
“I like the
code of mutton being a fusion of May and button. May's (not so) tender buttons. And Mutton (dressed up as
lamb) is a less than flattering image to evoke for someone who spurned your
attempts at romance, so would seem to fit from that perspective.”
Aguinaldo
responded:
"May quite possibly, given what Peter
says about the ‘Mutton quad’ (also Mutton = May + Button?). I've been looking
at the letter M as well, how it places well with the line: A centre can
place…
“I wonder if
M is (also) the letter that can wither, as W could be its image if it
withers (and vice versa). Seeing letters reflected in water now (or dissolving
to it, or become liquid Dali-style), thanks to you guys.”
Alenier added:
“Stanza 6
An eye
glass, what is an eye glass, it is water. A splendid specimen, what is it when
it is little and tender so that there are parts. A centre can place and four
are no more and two and two are not middle.
I think
refers to a printer's loupe used to magnify what has been printed to see how
the ink is going down on the paper and allows the printer to evaluate how all
the parts of type are functioning. Loupes are still used to look at the print
on paper results. The modern ones look different from the originals.
Loupes are
used in a number of industries, notably the jewelry trade, watchmaking, photography,
printing, dentistry, education and ophthalmology. Loupes are also used in academia and
life sciences, such as geology and biology. Amateur
naturalists may also find a hand lens or a loupe a useful tool when looking at
or identifying species.
Treanor responded:
“That’s
really interesting stuff about loupes, Karren.
“I was also
looking at the structure of the (human) eye and came across this (from
Wikipedia), The lens
is also known as the aquula (Latin, a little stream, dim.
of aqua, water).”
An eye
glass, what is an eye glass, it is water.
“So the eye
glass, or eye lens, is water, or derives from the Latin word for water and is also fluid like in reality,
she would have known this from her anatomy lessons I would imagine.”
Alenier said:
“Pete, what
a good point about eyes and water! Makes perfect sense. And just look at that
word specimen—it puts Stein at her
microscope!”
RUMINATING
STUDENTS
Aguinaldo
rejoined the conversation but took it in a different direction:
“For
some reason I have in mind bored students who would rather be passive than
participate. Their physical (maybe also mental) activity goes to the chewing of
gum, how to do it without teacher noticing (or off to the principal's office
with you! Gum is not the subject!)”
Alenier added:
“I think
your instincts are good on this line of thinking. I believe Stein is
accounting for experiences she had as a student at Woods Hole microbiology camp
and also at Johns Hopkins.”
Treanor commented:
“Dennis, I
like the image of the students chewing their gum, and being dispatched to the
principal's office as punishment.
“I have a
picture of mutton (being sheep meat) and chewing pointing towards sheep being ruminants and having to regurgitate and chew
their cud. This chewing is called rumination
and rumination is also used to describe constantly going over things mentally,
worrying.
“So are the
students merciful and chewing and re-chewing the same material? Going
over and over the same stuff to learn and digest. It may be necessary but
regurgitation and rumination don’t seem like very positive descriptions of what
students have to do. Maybe the students are having to chew on the printed word,
if there is an illusion to printing in other parts of the poem.
“Also there
seems to be a rhyme between student
and ruminant.
“And maybe
the students (like mutton or sheep) recognise that they chew /regurgitate
/ruminate on grass (like sheep), or leaves of grass (perhaps alluding to
Whitman's written words).”
STUDENTS,
PUPILS & DILATIONS
Connecting
students with eyes, Alenier offered:
Student,
students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
“I decided
to look up the word student and discovered that in British English,
students are those studying at schools of higher learning (colleges &
universities). The British call children studying school children, schoolboys,
schoolgirls OR pupils.
“In this set
of stanzas we have this line:
An eye
glass, what is an eye glass, it is water. A splendid specimen, what is it when
it is little and tender so that there are parts.
“Could
Mutton being about seeing?
“The pupil
is the opening in the center of the iris through which light enters the eye. In
this set of stanzas we also have this line:
Light
curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup.”
With enthusiasm, Aguinaldo exclaimed:
“Pupils!
Wow, of course! Here's some dilation for you, Pete and Karren.”
Alenier came back with:
“Dennis, while
of course that word dilation that you
offer Pete and me could apply to the pupil expanded, it also has this meaning:
A lengthy spoken or written discussion on a topic:
e.g. ‘an Edith Whartonesque
dilation on a social class steeped in hypocrisy.’
“Maybe we
could call that letter which can wither a dilation.”
STEIN BEFORE
BOGART
Aguinaldo
provided this insight on what Stein was accomplishing with Tender Buttons:
“And
this eye + your post brings to mind such readings as this that we're doing.
It's like Stein's looking at how closely she's writing this, how closely we'll
(have to) look. And she's telegraphing from her desk to ours: here's looking at you, kids!"
Alenier continued:
“Whatever
the students chew could be a dilation.
Student,
students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
“Whatever
that topic is, it seems to embody hate.
Hate
rests that is solid and sparse and all in a shape and largely very largely.
“While it is
not a subject, that dilation involves change.
Light
curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a
subject.
Change a
single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it
expresses nausea.”
IN THE PINK
Changing the
subject, Alenier moved on to stanza
5:
Like a
very strange likeness and pink, like that and not more like that than the same
resemblance and not more like that than no middle space in cutting.
The color
pink is named after the flowers called pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus. The name derives from the frilled edge of the
flowers—the verb "to
pink" dates from the 14th century and means "to decorate with a
perforated or punched pattern" (possibly from German "pinken" =
to peck).[6]
“Peck also
makes me think of pecker or penis but Strange likeness and pink makes
me think of same-sex relationships especially between women.”
Here Steiny stands scratching her head
knowing that not every stone has been turned but hoping that the next section
of Mutton will dilate and shine some additional light.
Participants: Dennis Andrew
S. Aguinaldo, Karren Alenier, Judy Meibach, Peter Treanor
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