Tender Buttons

Mimic and talk and write like some kind of Gertrude Stein. We don't know what roots are - rootless - my generation is not lost - we're staying put on the couch where we live. No one can say we're not (or are) expatriate because the shores of our big sea end at the edges of a computer screen - are virtual (and not) reality - no one travels to get there. No hurt feelings (disaffected) because we're all equal - a populist nightmare with the volume turned down. The self-leveling society. Every idea is as good as another is as good as none as all are included. Our defects become differences become diversity become democracy become diluted and die. An eye for an eye made the whole world blind or one-eyed and only some (although they don't want to be singled out) try to make something new something cyclopean (formerly one could say at least but that is pejorative) toward the future but that detracts from the past which we defend on principle only but not in actuality so as soon as we can think of it we'll change that name too but don't pressure us.

The playfulness & intellectual rigor of the best of theModernist movement unite in this small book of exquisiteprose poems that may be read, on one level at least, asan extended allegory of eroticism (e.g. "tender buttons"are nipples); & on another, as a manifesto of what wasto become L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. But you don't really needto be a scholar to appreciate the freshness & lovelyrhythms of the poems. They are like nothing else thatexisted at the the time they were written (not even thegreat Victorian "nonsense" poets dared to be this non-referential) & though they have cast a long shadow across late 20c. PoMo,there really has been nothing quite like them since.

My random poems have been said to be Stein-like. Now that I know more about G.S., a poem was inspired by her..."Gertrude Stein Poeme O'Mijn":Images realize aspects throughout. Painting daunting solid reasonable feisty planes of aura felt. Pangs of fluid energy suffer thought. Remaining understood eras feel wrought over and through. Satisfied mental strain tally connective ways again. Palled sorts of slews o'mirage onslaught on papyrus.

I don't have as much patience as some with Stein's other work, but "Tender Buttons" is sublime. It leads the mind down paths it would never otherwise follow. I'm basically a philistine, and a populist, but this book never loses its splendour. Here (and here only, for me) Gertrude Stein had perfect pitch.