Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Box.”

The whole thing is not understood and this is not strange considering that there is no education… Gertrude Stein

Bewildered with “A Box.”, only the fourth poem part of Gertrude Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons, the Steiny Road Poet’s journey plays like an endless rollercoaster ride. Full disclosure is that the Steiny Poet quoted the opening words of this poem in her opera Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On. More on that shortly. Here’s Stein’s fourth poem from section one “Objects”.

A BOX.

Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

From the moment the Steiny Poet decided to quote in her opera libretto Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, she believed that this passage refers to the relationship Gertrude had with her brother Leo after she quit medical school and came to Paris to live with him. However, the Steiny Poet never spent the time to think deeply about the rest of this difficult-to-understand stanza. What came to mind in writing the opera libretto was that Gertrude felt embarrassed and grateful for her brother Leo’s support after she left medical school in her fourth year of studies, just shy of a degree. Such a decision would raise lots of questions and perhaps Gertrude was not willing to say or could not yet formulate why she had taken such a drastic step away from all the work she had done in those four years.

At least a few words from “A Box.” seem reasonably connected to what has already been established. The words research, analysed [analyse is the British spelling of analyze], and disappointing supports the theory that this passage might be connected to her college and medical studies that should have concluded in a lucrative career. In her undergraduate studies, Stein participated in psychological research and experiments. While the word cattle seems unconnected, one of the definitions—“Humans, specially when viewed contemptuously or as a mob”—makes painful cattle line up with the failed medical career as in those people who judged her for her failure to finish.  The phrase a fine substance echoes “A Substance in a Cushion.” Before the Steiny Poet comments on that fine substance, she wants to continue unfolding her process for navigating this stanza of 78 words.

So feeling not particularly connected to most of the words in this poem, the Steiny Poet decided to dip into “Rooms,” the last section of Tender Buttons, which she feels provides a roadmap to the entire book. Searching “Rooms” for the word question yielded fourteen hits. Including this stanza:

A climate, a single climate, all the time there is a single climate, any time there is a doubt, any time there is music that is to question more and more and there is no politeness, there is hardly any ordeal and certainly there is no tablecloth.

The tenor of this stanza from “Rooms” indicates a crisis of doubt causing the narrator to question herself without gentle behavior (politeness) though whatever the situation is is not deemed so difficult (ordeal). Is the narrator trying to talk herself down, that whatever the crisis is cannot be so bad? Probably.  As stated in the first post on Tender Buttons, noted Steinian scholar Ulla Dydo maintains that behind all Stein’s writing are the questions What am I? Who am I? So while questions concerning the narrator’s behavior might be coming from her brother Leo in “A Box.”, they also might to be coming from the narrator, which sheds light on the obsessively long last sentence made up of 53 words out of the total 78.

While the Steiny Poet is not going to do justice to the last sentence, she will attempt to talk through it in small sound bytes.

So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin …

From the beginning of Tender Buttons, color is prominently discussed. In “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”: a single hurt color. In “Glazed Glitter.”: no color chosen. In “A Substance in a Cushion.”: The change of color is likely. A search of “Objects” (section 1 of Tender Buttons) yields 31 hits on the word color. While the Steiny Poet wondered if Stein thought white was colorless, a search through Tender Buttons, indicates that Stein considers white a bone fide color. Another thought is whether the word white is a stand-in for right, as in the right way of being round.

Is pin the kind of tool used in sewing (there are many passages in Tender Buttons depicting sewing) or is it an adornment pinned on one’s dress or jacket lapel? The Steiny Poet’s great grandmother Pearl had a headshot of the Steiny Poet’s great grandfather Isaac that was inserted in a small round frame with a pin on the back so she could wear it to show everyone the young man she loved. Pearl and Isaac courted in Baltimore in the early 1900’s. Maybe Stein who lived in Baltimore when the Steiny Poet’s great grandparents were courting saw these kinds of love tokens if she did not have one herself.

… and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely …

By proximity, it is referring to pin. Is pin a stand-in for Alice Toklas? At the time Stein met Toklas, Stein was analyzing everyone she encountered to determine what she called his or her Bottom Nature. Stein’s initial analysis of Toklas (written into one of her notebooks) was not favorable. Stein’s Bottom Nature evaluation contained such words as crooked, lazy, stupid. Brenda Wineapple in her Stein biography Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein said that while Stein was attracted, she was wary of Alice’s capacity for deceit and manipulation which Stein interpreted as crookedness. With a scientist’s eye, her research sees the fine substance strangely. The fine substance established in “A Substance in a Cushion.” is sugar and sugar equates to kisses, love, and the love object Alice Toklas or so the Steiny Poet thinks.

… it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

In this case, it refers to fine substance.  But here, the substance seems like it is in a petri dish reacting with some other substance and shifting color possibly from the white way to green? The green is not becoming red as in the opening reaction out of kindness comes redness. The green is indicating or pointing to some other reaction or perhaps it belongs to that system to pointing which includes the hurt color and which seems to be a reaction or difference that is spreading as described in “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”

Has the Steiny Poet therefore talked herself out of her belief that the opening lines of “A Box.” does not refer to Gertrude’s relationship with Leo? Has the Steiny Poet just revealed to herself that  “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” is about Stein’s relationship with Toklas and thereby negated the possibility that the first poem segment is about Stein’s own birth? Absolutely not. What the Steiny Poet has discovered is how Stein can talk about multiple experiences at the same time. Therefore, Stein makes cousins out of the carafe that is a blind glass and a box. And by the way “Objects” contains two poem segments titled “A Box.” Hang on for the endless rollercoaster ride.

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Substance in a Cushion.”

Feeling like the third trip into Gertrude Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons is that deep dark disorienting woods that prefaces Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Steiny Road Poet is beginning to register doubts that she can sustain the gusto she had for “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” and “Glazed Glitter.”

Because “A Substance in a Cushion.” is comprised of ten stanzas, the discussion format will be a stanza and then commentary. The entire piece can be seen under “Objects” at Bartleby.com.

So, fearful of losing her way and what might be exclaimed upon, the Steiny Poet picks up her literary lantern and enters these Steinian woods.

A SUBSTANCE IN A CUSHION.

The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.

Given that the Steiny Poet has skimmed “Rooms,” the last section of Tender Buttons and believes the work (begun in 1912) includes details of Stein’s relationship with Alice B. Toklas, the Steiny Poet ventures that cushion and food words like sugar and vegetable have something to do with the relationship Stein was developing with the woman who would become her life partner.  Stein met Alice September 8, 1907, when Alice came to Paris to escape the domestic life in which she was trapped with her widowed father and brother in her hometown San Francisco. Alice was talented in needlework and the culinary arts. The words change and difference could refer to the elation Stein felt in having Alice in her life. Also the word change links “A Substance in a Cushion.” to “Glazed Glitter.” Especially when the second poem in “Objects” states, The change has come. The phrase change of color might indicate the flush of feeling Stein had for Toklas and how that feeling made her blood course through her body. Clearly Toklas brought new color to Stein’s life.

Sugar affects blood chemistry more directly than vegetables. Since Stein’s training was scientific and medical and she and her brother Leo often discussed food since he had digestive problems, maybe Stein was noting the difference in how she was feeling eating Toklas’ cakes versus the other food Toklas prepared. By the summer of 1910, Gertrude had invited Alice to live with her and her brother Leo at 27 rue de Fleurus.

While the Steiny Poet can picture Toklas doing needlework for a cushion cover, it’s easy to think that Stein saw Toklas as her cushion against the world that would interfere Stein’s various appetites.

Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume.

Here the Steiny Poet, like Dante entering those dark woods so fearful of the night and sleepy to boot, would like to abandon looking for the true way through Tender Buttons. OK, try this: perhaps Stein’s discussion of callous (by the way, Stein is using the adjective form of the noun callus) means she had been hardened against love, had become callous to the possibility of finding love. Stein had been keeping company with men—her brother Leo and all the male artists of Picasso’s circle. However when Toklas showed up with her friend Harriet Levy things began to change for Stein. Stein softened. For now, the Steiny Poet doesn’t know what to think about dirt being clean in quantity, except to say maybe dirt means gossip.

A cushion has that cover. Supposing you do not like to change, supposing it is very clean that there is no change in appearance, supposing that there is regularity and a costume is that any the worse than an oyster and an exchange. Come to season that is there any extreme use in feather and cotton. Is there not much more joy in a table and more chairs and very likely roundness and a place to put them.

Notorious throughout her vast oeuvre, Stein uses coded language to talk about her relationship with Toklas. Cover is a word used with frequency through out Tender Buttons—eight times in “Objects,” nine times in “Rooms,” and once in “Food.” What cover story did Toklas (Stein’s cushion) have for the world? Toklas became Stein’s secretary. This paragraph sets a change in Stein’s life and pictures a happy domesticity filled with costume, oyster (a food known to be an aphrodisiac), feather, cotton, table and chairs.

A circle of fine card board and a chance to see a tassel.

In this stanza, maybe Stein raises the specter of her graduation from medical school with what seems to be a description of a mortarboard cap. The thought about her missed opportunity seems triggered by Stein’s reference to the joy described over a table and more chairs and very likely roundness and a place to put them.

What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. The question does not come before there is a quotation. In any kind of place there is a top to covering and it is a pleasure at any rate there is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense. It shows what use there is in a whole piece if one uses it and it is extreme and very likely the little things could be dearer but in any case there is a bargain and if there is the best thing to do is to take it away and wear it and then be reckless be reckless and resolved on returning gratitude.

Pure elation is the message of this stanza. Stein is so happy she describes it as a violent kind of delightfulness reveling in pleasure that she is not going to tire of. The statement about refusing to believe nonsense might refer to gossip about Stein. According to Brenda Wineapple in her Stein biography Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein, around the time Gertrude was just getting to know Alice, there were rumors that Gertrude and Leo were having an incestuous relationship.

Now here the Steiny Poet takes a big risk—maybe what the last sentence of this stanza means that Stein has graduated, that what she suggests wearing is the mortarboard, and what she has graduated from is her life with Leo to her life with Alice. Even in Paris being open about a same sex relationship was reckless. Stein and Toklas were not open about their relationship. The cover was Toklas was Stein’s secretary.

Light blue and the same red with purple makes a change. It shows that there is no mistake. Any pink shows that and very likely it is reasonable. Very likely there should not be a finer fancy present. Some increase means a calamity and this is the best preparation for three and more being together. A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that.

In the catalog written by Wanda Corn and Tirza Latimer for the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories appears a 1910 photo of Stein and Toklas in matching batik dresses. (Even for Stein, this outfit was out of the ordinary and as we say today over the top.) The narrative says that Toklas selected and bought the material and then designed and made the dresses. It was in huge change of wardrobe from the austere monkish clothes Gertrude and Leo wore and which provoked people to refer to them as the frères. Perhaps this stanza refers to the batik dress. Perhaps that change (increase) caused calamity in the 27 rue de Fleurus household of three (Leo, Gertrude and Alice).  Stein seems to enjoy that shake up of the calm and calls it a sweetness.

A seal and matches and a swan and ivy and a suit.

Because the last sentence of stanza 6 seems to be Steinian sexual code—think sweetness as sugar (a word used in stanza 1) as give me some sugar or gimme some suga, where sugar means kiss—maybe the seal and swan are stand-ins for Stein and Toklas. However, the Steiny Poet is stumped as to which partner is the fire (matches) wielding partner and which is the one associated with ivy and a suit. Both matches and suit are associated in the Steiny Poet’s mind with the male partner. Stein identified herself in later coded writings as the husband. Ivy is often associated with the Ivy League schools such as Harvard where Stein did her undergraduate work.

A closet, a closet does not connect under the bed. The band if it is white and black, the band has a green string. A sight a whole sight and a little groan grinding makes a trimming such a sweet singing trimming and a red thing not a round thing but a white thing, a red thing and a white thing.

The etymology of the word closet is associated with a small enclosure, private room, a closed space, a bedroom. Could something racy be going on in the privacy of this small room that involves a little groan grinding and sweet singing? Perhaps it is only Toklas sewing a present for Stein.

The disgrace is not in carelessness nor even in sewing it comes out out of the way.

Given the joy expressed in this poem, the word disgrace makes the Steiny Poet think that Stein is talking about something more than elicit sex, which is clearly an action that comes out of the way of acceptable behavior of Stein’s time. For lack of better light here, the Steiny Poet says she is stumped in the same way that the translation she is reading of the opening canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy introduces Divine Love: “The time was at the beginning of the morning, and the sun was mounting up with all those stars, that were with him when Divine Love first moved all delightful things, so that the hour of day, and the sweet season, gave me fair hopes of that creature with the bright pelt.”

What is the sash like. The sash is not like anything mustard it is not like a same thing that has stripes, it is not even more hurt than that, it has a little top.

Sashes are associated with waists of dresses as in a belt, a band worn over the shoulder to show rank as in an adornment worn with cap and gown, and a frame in which the panes of a window or door are set. Initially this sash seems to be about a dress, maybe a dress Alice made, one with a little top. Or could this sash be the one Gertrude did not wear at medical school graduation and that’s why the hurt appears in this stanza?

Could it be that the sewing referenced in stanza 9 refers to an activity a doctor/surgeon might do? Could the substance in this cushion be sugar? Could it be that the Steiny Road Poet has gone over the top and lost her way in this Steinian woods with her close read of “A Substance in a Cushion.”?

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “Glazed Glitter.”

Upon initiating the second leg of the Steiny Road Poet’s journey through Gertrude Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons, the Steiny Poet already knows that what worked for actively reading “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”—that is, going word by word—is not going to work for “Glazed Glitter.” Have a look at second poem and see what you think.

GLAZED GLITTER.

Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover.

The change in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.

There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine. There can be breakages in Japanese. That is no programme. That is no color chosen. It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing. It certainly showed no obligation and perhaps if borrowing is not natural there is some use in giving.

GIVING WAY: NO GRATITUDE IN MERCY & IN MEDICINE

After reading “Glazed Glitter.” Several times, the Steiny Poet has a few thoughts. Stein is talking about money, specifically the American coin called the nickel and possibly the chemical element which used to make up the American nickel. She is also talking about one’s livelihood and specifically her own, which formerly had been predicated on her study of medicine. The last stanza which begins “There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine” makes it clear she is talking about her own career path, that “[t]he change has come” in stanza one is less about the nickel (more about this soon) and more about her decision to quit medical school despite being so close to graduation.

So abandoning the strategy of going word by word, the Steiny Poet decided to look at the last poem of Tender Buttons’ section one, “Objects” not so much to illuminate “Glazed Glitter.” but to see if the last entry of the section talks to “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” Over the years, the Steiny Poet has learned if she gets stuck writing and thinking that her best strategy is to read something that might be a little out of the neighborhood of interest. Also during the ModPo live web session on Tender Buttons, Rachel Blau DuPlessis suggested that while approaching Stein’s work with a cubist method of looking at all sides might work for a while, something instead of going around, in, and under, the reader has to go out and away from the work being read.

Did it help to read the very short “This Is This Dress, Aider.”?  Not at all. However, the break from thinking about “Glazed Glitter.” made the Steiny Poet wonder in what year Stein wrote Tender Buttons. And might that timeframe when Stein was writing Tender Buttons illuminate why she chose to write about nickel and nickels. In searching the Internet, the Steiny Poet found “The Making of ‘Tender Buttons’: Gertrude Stein's subjects, objects, and the illegible” by Joshua Schuster. The article appears in the journal Jacket 2 founded by ModPo professor Al Filreis.

THE ORDER OF TENDER BUTTONS

Stein began writing Tender Buttons in 1912. Schuster’s article recounts how the work came to be and, interestingly, that section one “Objects” was written last but Schuster is unsure whether section two "Food" or section three “Rooms” was written first. Abandoning Schuster’s essay at that fact, the Steiny Poet picked up her paper copy of Tender Buttons to read the entirety of “Rooms”. Here the Steiny Poet purposefully puts the period in the last sentence outside the quotation mark because the Tender Buttons section titles, unlike the interior poems of sections one and two, do not include periods.

Now that “Rooms” has taken off the top of the Steiny Poet’s head and freed her thinking, she has a bigger framework to look at “Glazed Glitter.” and the poems that make up “Objects” and “Food”. Why? Because “Rooms” is the roadmap for the entire work. In reading “Rooms” the Steiny Poet is convinced that Stein is conveying meaning and that the meaning is closely associated with her life. In fact, the Steiny Poet believes Tender Buttons is Stein working out her decision to quit medical school, to become a writer of consequence, to declare her relationship with Alice B. Toklas, to openly disagree with her brother Leo, and to embrace the progress of the Twentieth Century (e.g. electric lights). For now, Dear Reader, you’ll have to trust that the Steiny Poet will back up what she says about “Rooms” when she sequentially gets to that part of the journey through Tender Buttons.

THE PHYSICS OF NICKELS AND CUSHY JOBS

According to Wikipedia, the Liberty Head nickel circulated as the American five-cent coin from 1883 to 1912. Made of copper and nickel, the coin, which had longstanding production problems, was designed to meet commercial need, particularly as coin-operated machines became popular. By 1911, the United States Mint worked on designing the Buffalo nickel which went into production in 1913. The Steiny Poet can imagine that Stein took delight in thinking about the change in change such as the nickel.

As a chemical element, nickel presents a silvery-white shine but may oxidize (turning a rusty red) when exposed to air or water. Maybe Stein considers this oxidation glazed glitter and is suggesting the oxidation is a temporal condition in the phrase red weakens an hour. In nature, nickel is often found in combination with the chemical element iron. Maybe Stein was referring to this condition of existing with iron in the opening line,  Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover where cover stands for iron.

What flips the poem into a different plane of meaning is the word sinecure. Sinecure means a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit. Surely working as a doctor is hard work and not a cushy job (or maybe it was in Stein’s time) but looking at the historical genesis of the Latin words sine cūrā  meaning without cure (of souls) might be what Stein was toying with. Certainly there were no cures for female diseases like the ovarian cancer that struck down her mother and which possibly motivated Stein in part to enroll in the medical school of Johns Hopkins.

Like “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”, the last stanza of “Glazed Glitter.” is heavy on negatives—no gratitude, no programme [sic], no color chosen, no obligation, and borrowing is not natural. But then again, nickel is a chemical element made up of positive (28 protons) and negative (18-20 electrons) subatomic particles. Countervailing the negatives, Stein uses the linking verb is (without not) 13 times  and to be with modal verbs twice (i.e. will be and can be).

For now, the Steiny Poet parks “There can be breakages in Japanese” without significant comment. A search through Tender Buttons for the word Japan yielded, “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.” (from “Careless Water.” in “Objects”.) Perhaps what is being talked about is some sort of metallic vessel (nickel plated?) made in Japan and is just a way Stein is linking back to “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” or maybe the vessel is a spittoon—“It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing.” Possibly Stein is doing double duty here because it was chosen yesterday might also be her medical career which she is disdainfully casting aside like so much spit.

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.”

The Steiny Road Poet chose to sign up for a second time for the Coursera MOOC Modern Poetry taught by Al Filreis who teaches a similar version of this course to University of Pennsylvania students for significant tuition cost. ModPo as the Coursera course is known by those who participate in it is free and anyone anywhere in the world with Internet access can sign up at any time during the period the course is being taught and until it closes.

This year the Steiny Poet is a ModPo Community Teaching Assistant. This means she has been invited to respond to ModPo students in the discussion forums to ease their way in the world of contemporary American poetry by asking questions and making sure everyone is getting attention for the papers written and the difficulties presented. The CTA position also means this time around she doesn’t write papers or take the tests even if she wanted to. So she has decided, based on an exhilarating live ModPo session on Stein’s seminal poem Tender Buttons held October 2, 2013, where Filreis invited three Steinians to his table—Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, that she Steiny Poet would embark on a systematic journey through the three sections of this enigmatic long prose poem using the edition published by Sun & Moon Press.

COUNTING THE ELEMENTS OF TENDER BUTTONS

The three sections of Tender Buttons are “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms.” “Objects” contains 58 short poems and is laid out in the Sun & Moon edition on 20 pages. “Food” which has some longer pieces contains 53 poems and takes up 26 pages. “Rooms ” is one long piece taking 15 pages and entails 84 stanzas. Tender Buttons can also be seen at Barleby.com.

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

“Objects” begins with “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” (period included in the title.) While the Steiny Poet could follow Stein’s “rose is a rose is a rose” dictum and discuss this poem strictly as objects that are containers—carafe and glass, the Steiny Poet chooses to kick the close read of this poem into a cubist perspective that involves people and not things.

MIDWIFING TENDER BUTTONS—HERE COMES THE BABY

Because Stein focused on beginnings, beginnings that initiate something new like a birth, like her birth which she felt might not have happened because she found out she and her brother Leo were replacement children for two others who had died in infancy, the Steiny Poet sees the carafe/blind glass as a vessel like the womb. A quick aside on the long poem’s title: a tender button could be where the umbilical chord attaches to the stomach and therefore gives credence to seeing the opening poem of the long poem referring to where people come from (i.e. the womb).

According to Wikipedia a carafe is a handleless container for serving wine or other drinks. Unlike its cousin the decanter, it has no stopper. In French, if one orders a carafe d’eau (a carafe of water), one will get tap water rather than bottled water which costs extra.

During the ModPo live web session on Tender Buttons, Bob Perlman counseled that every word in this poem should be treated as a separate event. So far, the Steiny Poet feels more comfortable sticking for the most part in her discussion to the nouns, adjectives, and verb forms such as they are (a variety of the –ing forms).

Perhaps the word cousin is why the Steiny Poet saw the carafe and blind (maybe opaque, as you cannot see through this particular glass) as womb. In looking into the word cousin the Steiny Poet sees not only the definitions related to descendants of a common ancestor (close up and personal: the child of one’s aunt or uncle) but also “a member of a kindred group. “ Stein opens this poem “A kind in glass and a cousin.” Kind and kindred point to similar things and one of the definitions of kind “A group of individuals or instances sharing common traits” also includes people, as in “a class or group of animals, people, objects.”

Also cousin to the English word kind is the homographic German word Kind, which  means child. Because Stein’s writing is deeply rooted in her autobiography and what she saw happening in the present moment of her living, reference to German words is organic to Stein’s life. As a young child just approaching her first birthday, Gertrude and her family moved to Vienna, Austria. According to Brenda Wineapple in her Stein biography Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein, Daniel Stein (Gertrude’s father) had several reasons for taking the family to Europe. One of those reasons was to get a better quality of education for his five children. Furthermore, when the Stein family returned to America, Daniel often hired governesses to teach the Stein children German and French. Therefore, “A kind in glass” suggests the possibility of a child in the womb.

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.

WHAT’S THE POINT

“In a system to pointing” suggests to the Steiny Poet the accrual of generations of family and the elation of achieving a live baby, as in the father and mother exclaiming, Look what I have produced, a new human being! Origins mattered to Stein who traced her ancestry in her long novel The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress. Gertrude’s father was born in Germany; her mother Amelia Keyser was born in Baltimore, MD.  Similarly, Amelia’s father had been born in Germany and her mother in Baltimore. On both sides of Gertrude’s family the ancestry was German. Here the Steiny Poet will park discussion of the word pointing and its root word point in favor of more thoughts on family.

Although Gertrude Stein was not religious, she was an assimilated Jew coming from grandparents on both sides who took their families to worship at the same Baltimore synagogue. Perhaps an arrangement in a system to pointing has some currency with the old world practice of arranged marriages. The idea of the arranged marriage was to ensure the birth of the next generation. One of the meanings of pointing is “the insertion of marks to indicate the chanting of a psalm or the vowels in a Hebrew text.”  Another meaning is “the act or process of repairing or finishing joints in brickwork, masonry, etc., with mortar.” Both meanings deal with the concept of joining two things together and from this one can extrapolate the sexual union of a man and a woman with the possible outcome of human conception, pregnancy, birth.

The musical meaning of pointing adds a delicious avenue for discussion about Stein’s subtext of metapoetry (writings that comment on writing while seemingly attending to another subject). Perhaps, Dear Reader, you are throwing up your hands and quoting Stein’s rose mantra. Gently the Steiny Poet whispers Stein was contradictory and complex for all her repetition, grounding to the here-and-now, insistence that she was speaking to everyone to ensure for us the title (not known to Stein but assigned postmortem) of the “People’s Modernist.”

Maybe a discussion of the cornucopia of meanings for the word point (TheFreeDictonary.com lists 36 meanings for the noun form of point) pales in light of what was just said about the meanings of pointing but for the sake of additional discovery, the Steiny Poet will offer a few thoughts. Point can suggest the tapered end of a knife as in the obstetrician or midwife’s instrument that cuts the umbilical chord when a baby is born. Point can suggest “A mark or dot used in printing or writing for punctuation, especially a period,” which supports the possible meaning of  jubilant parental outcry, We had a baby. Point can suggest “The major idea or essential part of a concept or narrative,” which fits neatly with another avenue for discussing Stein’s metapoetry, particularly around birth or conception.

CHARGING THE POEM: NOT VERSUS IS

To achieve balance, the Steiny Poet believes, as in electrical balance, Stein moves from the positive to the negative by declaring, All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. She repeats the word not using that sometimes problematic part of speech which is an adverb but sometimes seems to act as an adjective as in not ordinary (translate as unordinary, abnormal, extraordinary, singular, uncommon, unique, etc.) though, in fact and in this case, not modifies the missing verb is. Later in her writing career, she explained her views on adverbs as they relate to verbs in “A Grammarian” (written in 1930):

"Verbs and adverbs are more interesting. In the first place they have one very nice quality and that is that they can be so mistaken. It is wonderful the number of mistakes a verb can make and that is equally true of its adverb.[…] Beside being able to be mistaken and to make mistakes verbs can change to look like themselves or to look like something else, they are, so to speak on the move and adverbs move with them and each of them find themselves not at all annoying but very often very much mistaken. That is the reason any one can like what verbs do"

The Steiny Poet sees Stein’s use of not ordinary reverberating with spectacle, nothing strange, and the difference that is spreading. As a double negative not unordered indicates order and reverberates with an arrangement in a system to pointing. [N]ot resembling has clear ties to not ordinary because if the object in question is not imitating and not similar than it is unique and possibly extraordinary.

What is particularly interesting about the last two sentences of “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” is the assumed or actual use of the word is. As Stein expert Ulla Dydo writes about “A Grammarian” in her book Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises (1923-1934), “Behind ‘A Grammarian’ lies the question that dominated all of Stein’s writing: What am I? Who am I? In work after work she struggled not for an answer or to revise or reject earlier answers but to show that there were many answers.” (p. 401) The Steiny Poet believes the emphasis on the word is is Stein asserting that this opening poem is where the life of this book starts. It is also where her emphasis in writing and on writing hinges, that is, the present moment embraced by existence. For Stein, existence is embodied in the words all this and that existence is unique to the object it is and more so as it becomes mature— The difference is spreading.

While the Steiny Road Poet has been randomly absorbing commentary from the ModPo discussions, she doesn’t remember anyone specifically taking the approach made here where “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” might be a discussion of human birth so now she will go back and see what has been said knowing there are many ways to read Gertrude Stein.

Fresh from The Fridge: New View of Spoken Word

July 30, 2013, the Steiny Road Poet went to The Fridge for an evening of spoken word sponsored by the Beltway Slam Team. This year’s team includes: Clint Smith, Natalie Illum, Pages Matam, Adele Hampton and Robalu Gibson. Sarah Lawson is their slam master. The evening was unique not only for the Steiny Poet who had not been to a slam in long time but also to the audience because it was a No Rules Night, a first for the Beltway Slam Team at The Fridge.

Typically the core spoken word rules are:

•   Each poet performs his or her own work.

•   No props.

•   No costumes.

•   No musical accompaniment or musical instruments.

•   Time limit is three minutes.

•   Judges must not know the contestants and may not compete.

For the No Rules event, there were performances with live musical accompaniment, a little singing, a little dance/movement, a bit of costuming, some improvisation. And a couple of the judges participated in the slam and clearly knew and reacted to their favorite slammers.

All of the performers provided interesting content though not everyone was in the competitive mode. There were several slammers who read from their computer or smart phone screens without making much eye contact with the audience. The bottom line was there were no performances that would put an audience member to sleep and nothing that was a throw away. People were speaking about issues that concerned them deeply without going over the edge.

Among the Steiny Poet’s favorite pieces was a piece from an award-winning English performer about bees. The number included musical accompaniment and some sprechtstimmer. Adele Hampton did a heart-tugging piece about her mother who was beaten by her father (one assumes her mom and dad). Pages Matam, Adele Hampton, and Clint Smith performed a clever piece that dealt with side effects. Pages Matam and Robalu Gibson did a several-part piece about racism that was partly set back in Josephine Baker’s time in Paris that was riveting.

Even the Steiny Poet got up on stage to participate and could feel and experience an intense engagement from the audience. People in the audience snapped their fingers to say we are supporting you. They responded in unison as a reaction to certain facts. Take this exchange: Slam Master: It only costs one dollar! Audience: Only one dollar? They clapped thunderously. It’s very much like an AA session where the vulnerable are intensely supported by the community of addicts. In any case, the Steiny Poet was put back in touch with a 1975 poetry performance she did with a belly dancer and sitar player in a small shopping mall where the audience engagement was 100 percent.

Should the Steiny Poet say that 98% of audience members were under the age of 30 and you know, Dear Reader, that the Steiny Poet is une femme d’un certain âge. And there were 50 people at least for a beautiful July night and everyone paid $5 entrance fee, which goes for renting The Fridge and helping the Slam Team get to national competitions. More about them on their Facebook page. Now this is a poetry community worthy of knowing and supporting.