The Steiny Road Poet, a.k.a. Karren Alenier, is shamelessly pleased to announce that she got one of her political poems published. She accomplished this with Gertrude Stein’s help.

WHO IS THAT GOGGLELESS GUY?

Not only was “State of the Union: A Dialectic with ‘In between.’ from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein” published online, the publisher presented the poem with a striking and rather naughty image. The image shows the traditional Halloween sweet called candy corn with some of the pieces sporting a man’s face. His face is predominately orange with paleness around his squinting eyes as if he has been wearing tanning goggles. His mouth is open with teeth and tongue showing. Visit TheNewVerse.News to get the full effect and see if you think the face is the Mar-a-Lago tanned president.

State of the Union: A Dialectic

by Karren LaLonde Alenier

with ‘In between.’ from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

In between a place and candy

..................................................crush

is a narrow footpath that

............................................ran to a sham self-clapping presi-

shows more mounting

......................................dent more shame

than anything, so much really that a

..............................................................stormy

calling meaning a bolster measured

.............................................................six inches

a whole thing with that.

.........................................and could it be

A virgin a whole virgin is judged

........................................................ass not candy catcher

made and so between

.....................................soft puta

 curves and

....................hard cógeme duro

outlines and real

.............................ITY

seasons and more

...............................spies look-

out glasses and a perfectly

.............................................candy-assed

unprecedented arrangement between old

......................................................................soldier

ladies and mild

...........................wall-less

colds there is no satin

.....................................sheet no

wood

..........pecker

shining

CALL IN THE POETRY POLICE

Question: How does one read this poem?

Answer: To get the full impact of this poem, read first all the lines at the left margin that are italicized. This is Stein’s poem “In between.”. Next read all the indented words which form the response to Stein’s fragmented prose poem. Lastly read the poem across in call and response format.

Here are some of the reactions Steiny has gotten to her poem and its publication:

“Oh, now I think I understand Gertrude Stein’s poem.” Margy Ross

“Very clever and amusing as well as challenging.” Gary Stein

“The image is a lot of fun and good for the poem.” Roberto Christiano

“…who could resist that picture among other things like the poem, which had me jitterbugging.” Carol Levin

“Can we call this ‘sweet’? What fun!” Barbara Goldberg

“Candy corn? How about candy porn?” Janet Peachey

In draft format, Steiny showed this to a young colleague who might be familiar with such pop culture things as Candy Crush (a video game released on FaceBook in 2012) and the slang shorthand ITY (InTo You). Nina Budabin McQuown characterized the work as “cuts and interspersals, dialogic method of composition.” The end of the poem starting with “no satin sheet” was her favorite part. While she like the opening lines, she said, “when the poem …becomes more interested in the dissolving and shredding of words and phrases, cutting right into the word ‘presi-/ / dent’ in that fourth line, it happens a little too fast for me and throws me out of the poem.”

Yes, dividing the word president between lines 4 and 6 was a grammatical leap that threw more than one reader. Still Steiny persisted with that division (keeping the line “shows more mounting” in between presi- and dent. However, she did add the hyphenated word “self-clapping” to slow down line 4—“ran to a sham self-clapping presi-”.

A couple of things to know about the opening lines—when Donald Trump was delivering his 2018 state of the union speech, there was a member of Congress playing Candy Crush on her smart phone. Also, among the variety of interpretations that can be made about the meaning of Stein’s poem “In between.” is that it depicts intimacy between Gertrude and her life-long partner Alice Toklas. Tender Buttons may be viewed as the sacred covenant between Stein and Toklas for how they would live their lives together. “In between.” may be suggesting the Jewish custom (Aufruf) of throwing candy at the groom walking down the aisle of the synagogue after he comes to the altar for a blessing a week in advance of the wedding.

There is much to know about Stein’s prose poem (remember, there are no line breaks—that was Alenier being subversive), including such nods to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and the satinwood tree which creates “perfect flowers” because the flowers contain both male and female reproductive organs. Yes, Alenier has written about this and much more.

To end, Steiny would like to throw New Verse News candy corn at Michael Avenatti, lawyer for porn star and film producer Stormy Daniels for keeping this political thunderstorm in the daily news. Who would imagine such a salacious story would have such a long shelf life?