BUTTONS BOX AS PIÑATA
THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................- A
SOUND: NUMBER 47
WORD
COUNT......................-
18
STANZA(S)............................-
1
THE SUBPOEM
...................- A
TABLE: NUMBER 48
WORD
COUNT......................-
63
STANZA(S)............................-
2
THE SUBPOEM
...................- SHOES:
NUMBER 49
WORD
COUNT......................-
42
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.....................................-
OSCILLATING
“Perhaps this poem is all
about swapping words, elephant and rat? Stein swaps constantly, back and forth,
oscillating between our comfortable knowledge of language and her new
creations. Is she l'enfant terrible? The reckless elephant? Artistic genius? Or
a rat? Ha!” Eleanor Smagarinsky
“Should we be seeing that
there is an enfant
terrible in the room?” Peter Treanor
A SOUND.
Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews
all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this.
A TABLE.
A table means does it not my dear it means a whole
steadiness. Is it likely that a change.
A table means more than a glass even a looking glass
is tall. A table means necessary places and a revision a revision of a little
thing it means it does mean that there has been a stand, a stand where it did
shake.
SHOES.
To be a wall with a damper a stream of pounding way
and nearly enough choice makes a steady midnight. It is pus.
A shallow hole rose on red, a shallow hole in and in
this makes ale less. It shows shine.
In this Tender Buttons
discussion, the Buttons Collective has gone beyond the pleasure principle—again.
This truth comes from the Twentieth century French philosopher Jacques Lacan
who named this overly ecstatic state of being Jouissance. It’s a temporary
state (usually) of derangement where pleasure crosses the line into pain. For
the Buttons, this has manifested in jetlag without jet—members ignore the basic
needs of sleep and eating (maybe other primal needs too?) to get online from
their geographic locations and catch other members of the collective as the
study session ramps up into high gear with hilarious and serious insights about
the puzzling Steinian code. Peter
Treanor quipped anagrammatically—Joy I Dance!
The Steiny Road Poet
stumbled across Jouissance in reading Ellen E. Berry’s Curved Thought and Textual Wandering: Gertrude Stein’s Postmodernism.
Steiny’s discovery happened moments before Peter saw that the elephant in the
room, already translated by Eleanor Smagarinsky, was Stein herself—l’enfant terrible. However, Peter went
on to say [anagrammatically] that the reckless rats might be the reckless arts.
Steiny is just giving you, Dear Reader, a preview of this heady exchange. Stay tuned.
Among the associations made
in this discussion for these subpoems, either generally or specific to one of
the subpoems, are: soundtalk (e.g. train noise that says “I think I can”), cheerleading,
circus, zoo, barnyard, piñata, child’s play, relationships, eroticism, Aesop
fable of the elephant and rat, body image and fatness, inn culture, The Red Shoes, Sacre du Printemps, gardening. Additionally, the Buttons used some
of these concepts to enhance the study: oscillation and exchange, choreography,
anagrams, homophones, mixing of high and low culture, design (furniture),
table-ness, linguistic dampers.
SOUNDTALK—WHAT OBJECTS SAY
Sometimes the way we
understand what came before—as in Tender
Buttons, published in 1914—is by something we know now. Referring to “The
Language of Things in the House” by Lydia Davis (published in Five Dials, Issue31),
Eleanor said:
“It occurred
to me that Stein may be writing out the sound of household objects in the same
way [as Lydia Davis]. Perhaps Stein is teaching the reader that objects can be
described via sounds. After all, we have five senses for a reason—all of them
should be used when writing.”
Here is an
excerpt:
THE LANGUAGE OF THINGS IN THE HOUSE
by Lydia Davis
The
washing machine in spin cycle: ‘Pakistáni, Pakistáni.’
The
washing machine agitating (slow): ‘Firefighter, firefighter, firefighter,
firefighter.’
Plates
rattling in the rack of the dishwasher: ‘Neglected.’
The glass
blender knocking on the bottom of the metal sink: ‘Cumberland.’
Pots and
dishes rattling in the sink: ‘Tobacco, tobacco.’
The
wooden spoon in the plastic bowl stirring the pancake mix: ‘What the hell, what
the hell.’
Eleanor
continued, “Could it be that
subliminally we are hearing words and phrases all the time? These words
and phrases must be lingering in the upper part of our subconscious, readily
available. Almost always, there has to be something hollow involved: a
resonating chamber."
Karren
Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny] answered immediately:
“Yes, Eleanor!
Whenever I read the first words Elephant beaten with candy, I hear [in my resonating chamber:
the head] the sound of an elephant trumpeting. It makes me think of the noises
at a circus where one eats cotton candy, has a little soda pop, and other chewy
things like a caramel apple on a stick and you swish through the sawdust thrown
down on the performance space, which the audience must tramp through to get to
their bleacher seats.
“I hear reckless
reckless rats as "rah, rah, rah" like cheerleading.
“Let’s think
about oscillation, conjoining and control. How do Stein's word come together
and spread apart with vibration, given whatever controls the reader puts on the
text?”
ELEPHANT AND
RAT SWAPPING
Eleanor responded:
“Well, gosh, I
just meditated on the sound of elephant,
and it sounds like un enfant. Most
pleasing, as it reminds me of the phrase like
taking candy from a baby. I would take candy from a baby by swapping it
with something else—this is this.
“Perhaps this
poem is all about swapping words, elephant
and rat? Stein swaps constantly, back
and forth, oscillating between our comfortable knowledge of language and her
new creations. Is she l'enfant terrible? [Is she] the reckless elephant? Artistic genius? Or a rat?! Ha!!!”
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