Stepping on Tender Buttons: “Mildred's Umbrella.”

Dear Reader,

The Steiny Poet kindly invited me to write a guest post on her blog. That sentence probably confused the regular readers among you, seeing as the Steiny Poet usually writes about herself in third person, and here am I (who am I? who do I think I am, pretending to be the inimitable Steiny Poet?) also writing about her in the third person.

My name is Eleanor Smagarinsky, and Steiny and I met on October 12, 2013 (o happy day!) at ModPo, click here for the glorious background. Right, so now that you’ve caught up, you realise that I use the word “met” in the virtual sense. While I have never had the pleasure of smiling directly at Steiny, nor of giving her an appreciative hug for all her hard work as a ModPo community TA, we have already developed a close bond thanks to the ModPo study group which she leads (I like to call it The Button Collective). The collective is comprised of many different people from around the globe, united by their passion for Tender Buttons. If you read the previous post “Nothing Elegant.” then you already met some of the key players in the drama and, by virtue of sharing our experiences, you (yes, you, I’m looking at You!), are part of our collaborative exploration and celebration of Tender Buttons.

“Nothing Elegant.” was number 7 in the volume Objects.

But now…

We are 8:

MILDRED’S UMBRELLA.

A cause and no curve, a cause and loud enough, a cause and extra a loud clash and an extra wagon, a sign of extra, a sac a small sac and an established color and cunning, a slender grey and no ribbon, this means a loss a great loss a restitution.

The Steiny Poet..............-              torchbearer

Nicola Quinn..................-              brave leader

Tracy Sonafelt................-              navigator

Eleanor Smagarinsky......-              backup/supplies

Allan Keeton..................-              poet

Dave Green....................-              biological welfare

Mark Snyder..................-              healer

Steiny held her torch high, pointing it towards an umbrella… an umbrella with no remarkable features other than a small label affixed to its handle which read “MILDRED.”  All seven of us (it’s a lucky number) peered at the umbrella, Tracy shrugged and then giggled “Any of you know a Mildred?” none of us did, “I see her as a proper, serious, buttoned-up, Oxford-shoed sort of person,” she said. Eleanor snorted appreciatively, which only encouraged Tracy to continue, “On a cloudy day, by gum, you aren’t gonna catch Mildred out without her umbrella, Mildred’s all business.” Tracy and Eleanor were behaving inappropriately, they knew this but couldn’t help themselves, so Steiny had to step in. Steiny, looking as serious as the situation necessitated, pointed towards Nicola and proclaimed, “You, dear Nicola, must open Mildred’s Umbrella and start us on our journey.”

Nicola tried to summon her courage by walking around and around the umbrella and taking in its every fold. “I’m not sure I can do this. All I see are thorny dead ends,” she said. But Eleanor held her hand and said, “On the contrary, remember the words of our wise and beloved ModPo teacher – Jason Zuzga – ‘Those are not thorns at what seems like a dead end -- they block secret places - secret gardens and playgrounds, secret gathering places, gatherings of cloth, of illicit liaisons –‘” Nicola nodded, smiled, and then grabbed the umbrella in both hands and opened it in one magnificent swoop, with loud enough and extra a loud clash, which all at once revealed an established color and cunning within.

“Well, I hesitate to say this,” Nicola said, “and this is without a proper reading, but… it brings to mind Mildred’s … VAGINA.” At which point all three men turned towards a different path, and began to pay great attention to the general state of the weather. “Was there a Mildred we know of?” Nicola turned towards Steiny, but Steiny had disappeared as well; only her torch was left still burning on its stand.

Left alone with only Mildred’s umbrella, Nicola, Tracy and Eleanor surveyed its cause and no curve, noticing a sign of extra within it, a sac, a small sac. “It reminds me of something organic, not just any old bag or pouch,” said Nicola. “Yes,” replied Tracy, “sac always suggests scrotum to me. With sack I can go in other directions, but with sac I arrive at scrotum for sure, for sure.” The giggling session which ensued… well…let’s just say that one of the women may well have peed her pants, just a bit.  “Stop, I can’t take this any more, my stomach muscles are aching from laughing so much,” Eleanor pleaded.

But then Nicola stopped laughing, and we all stopped, and she asked a question:

“Is this about abortion?”

A question which changed everything.

Silence.

Tracy and Eleanor turned towards Nicola. They nodded. Of course. Yes.

More silence.

And then Nicola spoke again --

“If you just look at the words overall it feels like that. Then loss, loss, though with restitution, a life won back?”

Steiny’s torch glowed ever-stronger. A line was drawn around the three women as they sat in a circle around the umbrella.

N -“I just got shivers down my spine”

E – “We will need to tread softly as we go. People’s feelings are at stake.”

T – “The path beyond the thorns, I think it might lead to the birth of a political or artistic movement and its abortion, miscarriage, or suppression.”

Nicola squeezed Tracy’s hand “Please continue, how would that work?”

Tracy explained: “I’m thinking of cause in the sense of “a goal or principle served with dedication and zeal” or “the interests of a person or group engaged in a struggle” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2011). Stein’s poetic or artistic mission perhaps? The cause of gender equality? It is not a cause supported lightly or casually or half-heartedly. There is no curve, no deviation from straightness. This cause is pursued at full bore and in full voice with extra clamor and clash and protest, and with the attendant publicity (Extra Extra, Read All About It!).

N – “And an extra wagon?”

T - “I’m thinking of an extra paddy wagon brought in to collect protesters, a sign of the extra numbers involved in this cause. “Sign” reinforces the idea of picketing and placarding that accompanies defending a cause.”

E – And "a sac a small sac and an established color and cunning?”

T - “A critique of masculinity (sac as scrotum)? Does this have to do with small-mindedness, establishment, inside-the-box thinking, painting all causes and their champions with the same broad brush-strokes (in the same established color)? Cunning takes me immediately to cunnilingus, which works better with a sexualised reading than it does here, or perhaps there is something distinctly feminine in this sac (sac as amniotic sac), which makes me think of the birth of a movement, small and fragile at the outset.”

The three women shuffled ever closer to each other, warming their hands by Steiny’s glowing torch.

E – And "the slender grey and no ribbon?”

T - “The umbilical cord? The birth of a movement is vitality and life. Sending it out into the world (or destroying it before it is fully formed) amounts to much more than the cutting of a ceremonial ribbon, a sham moment for cameras and onlookers. This is a cause that is real, a cause that breathes. Cutting the slender grey cord is not a going-through-the-motions formality.”

N – “this means a loss a great loss a restitution.”

“Indeed,” replied Tracy in a whisper, “Attempts to squash the movement, to kill or suppress it in infancy, come at tremendous cost. Any loss is a great loss. There will, there must, be compensation, restoration, restitution for the loss.”

N – “The cause could itself be for legal abortions.”

T – “Absolutely, I was leaving it open, but seeing the cause as support for legal abortion marries our readings.”

All three women wept together for quite some time. Between breaths and sighs they whispered words to each other which sounded a bit like curette, curve, Death’s sickle, a sac, a small sac. But I doubt you would have heard the words if you had found yourself passing by their circle on that night, for the soft breeze took those words away as soon as they appeared.

Then dearest Steiny returned, reclaiming her place in the circle. “Now you are ready,” she said, and thus she began:

“Milly is a nickname for Mildred. Gertrude Stein’s mother was nicknamed Milly despite her first name being Amelia. Milly Stein died of a female cancer. I don’t know if anyone has proof it was uterine cancer (a type of cancer which  may be genetically linked from one generation to the next) but Gertrude’s cause of death was uterine cancer and NOT stomach cancer as many academics have said. I have a copy of her death certificate and it reads, “carcinoma of uterus according to doctor’s statement.” I believe neither Gertrude nor Alice wanted people to know.

"I also believe Stein was studying medicine, and specifically female disorders, but she wasn't happy at Johns Hopkins. My understanding is that the male faculty did not treat her well. Her friend Dr. Claribel Cone pleaded with her to stay and finish the degree. This was also the time of her affair with May Bookstaver who ended their relationship and broke GS's heart.

"A possible reason / cause  for GS studying medicine might have been Milly’s illness, but it seems to devolve into something else like an argument (clash) with Leo in the time of writing TB. Then I think it moves to the period after Milly died when GS and Leo Stein took a wagon loaded with books into the Oakland Hills. No one seemed to be monitoring their behavior after Milly died and although GS claims her mother was not very important to  her (Milly had been sick in bed for a couple of years), the loss was deep.

"In Jewish practice, a rabbi rents (tears) an article of clothing worn by the mourner as a sign of mourning. Today one wears a cut piece of black ribbon. I don't know when the cut ribbon practice started so that needs some researching. Of course this poem says "no ribbon" but maybe the Stein family was too disconnected from practice to rent clothing or ribbon.

"When Stein was a teenager going to a singing lesson, she saw a man beat a woman with an umbrella. I believe she vowed after that experience, she would go to college and get a proper education so she would not be dependent on any man. There is a scene like this in The Making of Americans.”

As Steiny finished and silence descended, Dave stood and spoke softly to the group:

“Poetry, in its scrambling of conventional word arrangements, is like the literary equivalent of recombinant DNA, jumping genes, and genetic mutations. Many times those genetic changes result in nonsense, but sometimes they result in useful, novel features. That is what drives evolution forward. It is why we are here. So Stein is imitating life, at the molecular level!”

Eleanor then stood and took her place beside Dave:

“Do you think that ‘no ribbon’ might be connected to ribbons of DNA?! But wait, there’s no possible way that Stein could have known about the composition of DNA in 1914.”

Now it was Allan’s turn to join the speakers:

“Historical accuracy is useful only so far as it is useful. Eleanor, I’m sure that you would be able to use the scientific knowledge we have now so as to inform the text.”

Eleanor meditated on the word RIBBON until it levitated and became RIB ON. She then conjured up the Garden of Eden, a woman made from a man’s rib, the cunning of a serpent and an expulsion – a loss a great loss a restitution.

Allan clapped his hands:

“Dave! This is the DNA recombination you described, only in words. Such science yet to be revealed. What a revelation!”

Mark then stood up and cleared his throat.

He held up a canvas 24x20.

“I call it Dirt and Not Copper. I painted it for all of you, all of us, to remember today.”

The group of seven stood and took in the remarkable vision that was their conversation, painted there, before them, miraculously pulsating with life.

Then Steiny recited the poem once again:

MILDRED’S UMBRELLA.

A cause and no curve, a cause and loud enough, a cause and extra a loud clash and an extra wagon, a sign of extra, a sac a small sac and an established color and cunning, a slender grey and no ribbon, this means a loss a great loss a restitution.

And each person returned to his/her home, comforted by the sound of the words, which now meant so much more than words ever had.

“Good night, my dear Button Collective. This one was so very sad,” said the Steiny Poet.

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “Nothing Elegant.”

This post on “Nothing Elegant.” counts number seven of “Objects,” the first section of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons.

What comes to mind as the Steiny Road Poet makes her way, now in the company of the Button Collective (more on the Collective soon), through this remarkable long poem is the emphasis on containers. Tender Buttons opens with “A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.” Segment 3 offers “A Substance in a Cushion.”, granted an unusual object to hold anything except some kind of soft stuffing and what about that closet under the bed? Segment four is “A Box.”.

What are vessels of such sort if not objects that hold things, that hold other objects?

The Button Collective, as Eleanor Smagarinsky has named the MOOC Modern Poetry Tender Buttons study group (see "Dirt and Not Copper.”), could hardly contain itself in exploring “Nothing Elegant.”. While the Steiny Poet attended to other matters of her own daily living, the Collective (participating in this riot of study were: Eleanor Smagarinsky, Tracy Sonafelt, Tamboura Gaskins,  Mark Snyder, Nicola Quinn, Claudia Schumann, Allan Keeton, Dave Green) went way outside the box of ordinary reason finding frameworks (could we call these containers?) that included value of plain-versus-ornate, Dorothy Parker’s debunking of the rose as romantic symbol, female sexuality, a vacuum cleaner, metapoetics, fashion as enhanced by sewing and young female models, charm bracelets, love relationships, and Ernest Hemingway (a blind alley since Hemmie met his Buddha Gertrude in 1923 and Tender Buttons was published in 1914).

Here is the poem segment:

NOTHING ELEGANT.

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

OPENING STEIN’S GATE TO FIND THE UPRIGHT

Tracy Sonafelt’s first thoughts about “charm” and “rose” in the first bit of “Nothing Elegant.” sent her to Dorothy Parker debunking the traditional romantic emblem in "One Perfect Rose."

Dear Reader, if you took the time to view the Dorothy Parker “One Perfect Rose” animation, you will experience the level of hilarity that was experienced by the Button Collective in exploring “Nothing Elegant.” Now, Parker wrote this poem in 1923, so of course, if any influence happened, it was Stein on Parker and not vice-versa. Same anachronistic musing of those in the Collective who drew Ernest Hemingway and Woody Allen’s charming film Midnight in Paris into the study group discussion. Stein’s work has a way of reaching forward and backward while she stays anchored in the present moment.

However, Tracy only used Parker as a launching pad for specific and serious thoughts about “Nothing Elegant.” She said, “

·      In Stein, “a charm a single charm is doubtful,” because there is no one perfect, “elegant” charm or emblem that is love’s “amulet,” no single conventional romantic symbol we should privilege over all others. She divests the charm, here the archetypal red rose, of its protective magic, one meaning of charm, and its persuasive delight, another sense of charm. “A rose is a rose is a rose,” because things are what they are, nothing more; she is making new the “language of the floweret.”

·      If “the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it” takes my thoughts to gated communities of privilege, isolation, and detachment where residents attempt to wall out the world and themselves in. They are controlled, artificial, cinematic-set-like places divested of vitality and energy just as the gated hothouse rose, the cultivated, the artificial rose is bred out of its wild natural state to have uniform, engineered color and scent. In Parker, “My fragile leaves ... his heart enclose,” like the gate (thorns, outer petals, leaves) that surrounds (a circular gate?) the red heart of the red rose in Stein.


·      Just as she turns the conventional symbol of the rose on its head, Stein flips the conventional expression of opening a door or a window (here a gate) to let the outside in, replacing it with the idea of letting the inside in. When “inside is let in,” we penetrate the core, getting to the essence of objects, past the external baggage with which “outside” has laden those objects.


·      The problem with this idea of outside and inside changing places is that it depends on an understanding that their places change, but Stein writes “there places change.” Perhaps I can read it in the sense that right then and there, their places change. There is a moment in time and space when the exchange occurs. Imagining it this way heightens the sense that this change is deliberate, intentional, the result of a transformative act.


·      I also go to female sexuality whenever there is “red” and “rose” in the mix. Is there something about abandoning oneself to sexual freedom, opening oneself to sexual expressiveness, in opening the gate and letting the inside in? Can someone take this further?


·      “Something is upright” and “It is earnest” seem pretty straightforwardly and directly to say what they mean and mean what they say. Once we supplant artificiality with genuineness and external trappings with internal essence, we/it/the world stands upright. It is earnest. It is genuine. It is what it is. A rose is a rose is a rose.

FORGET FRIVOLITY

  

In just a few words, Tamboura Gaskins provided a sober synopsis and close read as follows:

Synopsis:

Only plain, unadorned things are important.  Forget frivolity. Make it simple to show you're serious.

Close read:

A charm a single charm is doubtful. -- Don't trust fanciful things.

If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it -- Treasure faded, well-worn things.

if inside is let in and there places change  -- if you down-size and give away (throw away) things that no longer fit,

then certainly something is upright -- this is just; it is the right thing to do.

It is earnest -- you will show the depth of your character, the seriousness of your actions.

THE JOKE ABOUT DOMESTIC WORK

From serious to surreal, Eleanor Smagarinsky equated this poem object as vacuum cleaner. To wit:

NOTHING - the opposite of something, i.e. A VACUUM.

ELEGANT? - I'm going out on a limb here and saying that the object in question is a VACUUM CLEANER.

I'll pause to allow the laughter to quiet down. OK.

Rose... rise.... dust rises, goes through the gate, inside and the places change - i.e. the house is cleaned, and of course - the vacuum is upright. Earnest is a synonym of upright, from a certain angle, so it's a joke.

Is this a joke about domestic work? If you look at ads from around 1914, there is always a very elegant woman vacuuming! And why yes, now that you ask, I did look it up to make sure they were around at that time:

http://inventors.about.com/od/uvstartinventions/a/Vacuum-Cleaners.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hoover_Company

I'm still not sure how to interpret the first bit about the charm and the rose, but Tracy - the poem - the rose and the limousine!! Do you think that GS could be making a really funny statement about getting a vacuum cleaner as a present for Alice? It would have been the equivalent of a limousine in a way, new-fangled machinery, and definitely much cooler than that doubtful rose. Oh. Wait. Is there a connection here between Alice and the vacuum cleaner and eroticism?

Psst, said the Steiny Poet back to Eleanor, “charm equals attractiveness! What does a vacuum do if not attract?

THE META VACUUM

So Eleanor all hopped up on discovery, could not sleep and provided another close reading invested in metapoetics:

Nothing Elegant.

There is elegance (simplicity?/art?) to be found in a vacuum, but we don't live in a vacuum - we live in the real world, a world made up of very real letters - language - so there's really NOTHING truly elegant in our world.

A charm a single charm is doubtful.

Each letter, on its own, does not have a distinct meaning.

If the red is rose

If the read is (in) rows. If we put the letters together into words...

and there is a gate surrounding it,

And the words are corralled into a regular structure - with grammatical rules / punctuation?

if inside is let in

If you concentrate all your efforts on penetrating the deepest meaning of this language

and there places change

And their places change - and if you change the placing of the letters, the syntax

then certainly something is upright.

Then you can be sure that the "something" you arrive at (that innermost meaning) is upright - i.e. standing up - i.e. not lying down - i.e. NOT A LIE.

It is earnest.

It is the most of "earn" - i.e. it earns you the most - i.e. You will be rich beyond your wildest imagination.

DRESSING FOR SUCCESS

Running to keep up with the velocity of this discussion, the Steiny Poet added her two cents by acknowledging that her first impulse was seeing “Nothing Elegant.” as coded sex—Gertrude speaking to her rose Alice.

The Steiny Poet’s second impulse, which seemed minor compared to the close reads before hers, dealt with fashion and sewing. She thinks she was influenced by what Ron Silliman said in a live ModPo webcast October 2, 2013, about Project Runway and having seen Insight and Identity: Contemporary Artists and Gertrude Stein, an art exhibition mounted at the Stanford (University) in Washington (DC) art gallery where there were standing artful dresses: including a rose is a rose dress and "A Long Dress." dress.

The Steiny Poet was thinking charm school and the kind of trinkets hanging off a bracelet. She was thinking those luscious young women (roses all) on the fashion runway who need to be protected by gates. She was thinking how the behind the scenes (seams) seamstresses take in and let out the dresses to make them fit the models.

But who can deny the vacuum cleaner or language frameworks? Shall the Steiny Poet wear out WOW some more, Eleanor? Shall we cow tip, Tracy, that palindrome WOW making it MOM? You gals you de best! do wop do wop, snap snap bop.

Then Tamboura sneaked in some explicit language: “If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it -- since my pussy has a gate, and my Pussy [Gertrude affectionately called Alice Pussy] is the gatekeeper.”

And, oh my! there was more talk like that from Allan Keeton and nostalgic tracts on charm bracelets from Eleanor and Tracy and and no one could sleep for two days across the whole world, because we were laughing and carrying on, breaking open vessels like this. Who knew Gertrude Stein could be so entertaining?

Stepping on Tender Buttons: “Dirt and Not Copper.”

Remember what the Steiny Road Poet said in her discussion of “A Substance in a Cushion.”—that she felt as if she was entering deep and dark disorienting woods? Things have changed for exploring “Dirt and Not Copper.”—the Steiny Poet is not alone on this journey, which threatened to be a battle with the elements of Gertrude Stein’s amazing mind.

Joining in on this journey through Tender Buttons with varying degrees of talking and listening contributions are MOOC Modern Poetry students Eleanor Smagarinsky, Mark Snyder, Judy Melbach, Tracy Sonafelt, Nicola Quinn, T. De Los Reyes, Susan Scheid, and Tamboura Gaskins.

Here is the poem segment:

DIRT AND NOT COPPER.

Dirt and not copper makes a color darker. It makes the shape so heavy and makes no melody harder.

It makes mercy and relaxation and even a strength to spread a table fuller. There are more places not empty. They see cover.

To start the conversation with the ModPo students, the Steiny Poet suggested picking out several words and working from these first. Wanting to avoid prejudicing the others, the Steiny Poet kept her selection of color, table, and cover to herself. She figured these words had been used by Stein in earlier poem segments and seemed important. However, she had not worked out how the other words in “Dirt and Not Copper.” interacted with this trio of words.

What broke lose after the Steiny Poet went to bed for the night (her night on the East Coast of the United States) was a monologue from Mark (he too lives on the East Coast of the United States) egged on by Judy (what, for Pete’s sake, is her time zone?) telling Mark, “Stein would have not wanted you to get some sleep—wake up!” We all know, Dear Reader, that Stein did her work at night, yes? Rachel Blau DuPlessis said in a live ModPo webcast October 2, 2013, that Stein worked in a hypnogogic state—that period just prior to sleep. Maybe some would call this lucid dreaming. DuPlessis stressed Stein did not do automatic writing. Her writing was controlled.

In Mark’s monologue as cheered on by Judy, he had connected dirt, copper, alchemy and the relationship of these things to gender. Mark said, “The alchemic symbol for copper is the symbol for Venus (and a common symbol for female or femininity), according to Wikipedia.” Then Eleanor, having a clear case of FOMO (fear of missing out) burst on the scene with a eureka outcry, “Reading your comments right now I suddenly saw it - THE TABLE, Mark, Judy, Karren - the table is THE PERIODIC TABLE.”

From Mark’s monologue on dirt and copper:

Dirt and not copper makes a color darker. 

The previous paragraph (the last in “A Piece of Coffee.”) makes several references to cleaning and maybe laundry (silk, cotton).  Dirt, therefore, connects this passage to the previous passage.  Dirt, depending on where you are, is dark, maybe black with rich fertile soils (around here in North Carolina it's red clay), so if you get your silk or cotton dirty it will indeed get darker.

Copper, on the other hand, is metallic, and shiny, and bright.  When copper gets dirty (tarnished), it doesn't get darker, it turns a dull green:

The question is raised for me:  what was copper used for back in the time Tender Buttons was written.  Coins, sure.  Pipes?  I don't know.  I think most decorative or household metal objects would more likely be brass or bronze (alloys that included copper), silver, gold than copper since it tarnishes so easy (though I'm no metallurgist).  



From Mark’s monologue on alchemy and gender:

This is interesting, but as yet unconnected to anything—I'll throw it out there.  No idea if Stein was aware of this.  The alchemic symbol for copper is the symbol for Venus (and a common symbol for female or femininity), according to Wikipedia anyway.

Could Stein have been aware of an association between femininity/female gender, Venus, and copper?  I have no idea but if she did, it can certainly be no accident that she chose copper and not iron, which is associated with Mars and therefore tied to male gender.  

Just playing with this idea—Copper (womanhood) doesn't make the color darker, dirt does.  With gender in mind, dirt (with associations to dirty boys out playing in the mud, dirty old men, iron works and industry being both filthy places and places in her time dominated by males) makes the color darker.  Maleness makes the color darker, but femaleness doesn't.  

Okay, I am riffing on alchemy and Wikipedia surfing, so I may be getting farther and farther from Stein, but take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo

Alchemists were trying to create or find what they called the philosopher's stone (an idea borrowed by J. K. Rowling for the Harry Potter book).  

According to the page cited here (for what it's worth), in alchemy darkening (nigredo) is decay or putrefaction—returning to a state of becoming dirt!  Hence, maleness is associated with decay and putrefaction, while femaleness is not.  (I note that she didn't say that copper made the color lighter, only that dirt made it darker).  But in alchemy, nigredo is a necessary first step toward creating the philosopher's stone.  You have to degrade, burn to ashes before you can create.  Nigredo leads to albedo (whiteness, lightening)—neatly dovetailing with copper's association to Venus (the morning star, the bringer of light), femininity, and illumination.  

Putting these together, using alchemy ideas as symbols (which I do only tentatively, since I have no idea whether Stein knew anything of alchemy), she must first embrace her own maleness (whatever that means) before reaching a higher state of embracing her own femaleness, and with it enlightenment.  



The next big breakthrough came from Tracy who said, “Dirt and copper are both used to create paint pigments, dirt or clay as a base, copper silicates to make brighter colors ranging from blue to green to purple.”

The next line: It makes the shape so heavy and makes no melody harder stumped Tracy as it did Mark and Eleanor. Tracy questioned, “A darker (“dirt”ier, more grounded, more natural?) shape appears heavier, more solidified, but I’m not sure about melody. I know we’ve used metaphors from both painting and music to describe the rhythm and repetition in Stein’s verse, so I feel that association here, but I don't know what to do with it.”

Here the Steiny Poet jumped in:

One of its meanings of melody is "a poem suitable for setting to music or singing." 

So, if dirt added to color makes the shape of a painting heavy, then maybe dirt is also gossip (Stein tends to double up on meanings) and that's how Stein jumps to "makes no melody harder" -- meaning gossip has no effect on the lyricism of a poem that is suited for singing, meaning Stein’s art of writing trumps the dirt of gossip. What this brings to mind for the Steiny Poet is composer Virgil Thomson telling Stein when he was first introduced to her how much Tender Buttons affected him. Probably, he, as a gay man, was not only tuned into the musical qualities of her work but also to the eroticism (which unfortunately was fodder for gossip).



One other framing idea put forward (by Eleanor) dealt with death. In particular, the words mercy and empty in combination with the word dirt and the phrase makes a color darker conjured the possibility of a graveyard while pointing to the Jewish custom of not listening to music in the mourning period. However, Eleanor could not find a way to relate this framework to more places not empty.

Here are some of Eleanor’s thoughts:

But if people have died why are there "MORE places NOT EMPTY" at the table, there should be more places empty as the people are missing. Maybe we are in a GRAVEYARD? And in that case, the dead don't "see cover" because they no longer see, now is their time to SEEK cover - under the ground - in the dirt, which is darker, but then it turns - like copper when it's out in the elements - into the colour of not-copper - green. Grass? Plant life, LIFE, which the survivors then eat at their table, which is, in turn, spread fuller.

It's life at its most fundamental - back to the ELEMENTS - back to the original table of living.



It makes mercy and relaxation and even a strength to spread a table fuller.

About the third sentence (there are only five in “Dirt and Not Copper.”), Tracy said, “I think of spreading a feast on a banquet table (a version of what Stein does in hosting her famous salons). It (whatever “it” is–groundedness? Rootedness?) makes mercy to put aside petty differences and welcome everyone to the table. It makes an atmosphere of unhurried relaxation and leisure for conversation to thrive. It makes strength to spread that table fuller and further and welcome all ideas.”

The Steiny Poet thinks the it in, "It makes mercy and relaxation and even a strength to spread a table fuller," is the melody -- music is mercifully relaxing and allows those at the table to continue taking in nourishment.

There are more places not empty. They see cover

Tracy concludes, “So more places are full than empty. The table is near capacity. The painting is almost complete. The ideology is almost fully formed.”

The Steiny Poet finds what Tracy said about the last lines of “Dirt and Not Copper.” economical and poignant. To this the Steiny Poet adds, “The nourishment then flips back to the creation of the painting but because of the nourishment, more color has filled in, covering the canvas.” In the live ModPo webcast October 2, 2013, Bob Perelman provided an example of Stein pointing to Cezanne applying small patches of color on a canvas where all of the patches were equal, drawing attention neither to foreground nor background and saying this was also Stein’s approach with words.

Who knew this leg of the journey through Tender Buttons would reap so many riches? The Steiny Road Poet thanks everyone who came to the ModPo study group and lent his or her support. Talking and listening is highly recommended.