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.

 from Tender Buttons, “Objects” by Gertrude Stein

Paradelle of “A carafe, that is a blind glass.”

a carafe that is a blind glass

a carafe that is a blind glass

a kind in glass and a cousin

a kind in glass and a cousin

a glass a blind and a kind cousin

that glass is in a carafe

a spectacle and nothing

a spectacle and nothing

strange a single hurt color

strange a single hurt color

a strange color nothing hurt

and a single spectacle

and an arrangement in

and an arrangement in

a system to pointing

a system to pointing

pointing to a system

and an in arrangement

all this and not ordinary

all this and not ordinary

not unordered in not resembling

not unordered in not resembling

unordered not all this and

in resembling not ordinary not

the difference

the difference

is spreading

is spreading

is difference

the spreading

the system is in an arrangement and

a this and that unordered spectacle is not

a strange pointing to ordinary difference in

a hurt carafe resembling a glass glass

and a not kind nothing a cousin spreading all

not in a single and blind color

         as interpreted by Karren L. Alenier

Much has been written about Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons by academics, students and yours truly—the Steiny Road Poet, a.k.a. Karren L. Alenier. While the prominent academic Marjorie Perloff has said the objects of Stein’s Tender Button are abstracts much like the cubist painting of Picasso and Bracque, Steiny and her band of international online students (met in the MOOC nicknamed ModPo) have pointed out how the cubist descriptions coming from various directions are often connected to Stein’s biography.

In this look at the opening subpoem of Tender Buttons, Steiny is using Billy Collins’ poetic form, the paradelle, to deconstruct “A carafe, that is a blind glass.” Steiny’s rationale for doing this is to slow down the reading of Stein’s poem since the first four lines of each stanza of the paradelle (except the last stanza) deliver two short lines that are repeated exactly (from Stein’s poem, starting with the title) until one arrives at the last stanza. However, the fifth and sixth lines scramble the words used in lines one and three. The penultimate stanza then takes the entire set of the 45 words, including the title, and makes a completely new arrangement. Clearly, it is a word puzzle challenging the writer to use all the words in a way that either makes sense or music or both.

What Steiny hopes to achieve is to honor Stein’s tenets for how to revitalize the English language. Some of the new lines are tongue twisters and require the reader to slow down—e.g. a glass a blind and a kind cousin. Steiny has also jumped on the opportunity to do away with commas and question marks which Stein said were unnecessary as noted in her book Lectures in America by Gertrude Stein under the lecture “Poetry and Grammar.”

The paradelle form serves to emphasize a visual pattern of repetition that comes from Stein’s words but are hidden in the prose format since all the words run together. One can see the use of many connecting words like “a” and “and.” Also one can better hear and see how many alliterative “s” sounds happen—glass, cousin, spectacle, strange, single, system, this, resembling, difference, spreading.

By taking apart Stein’s short poem, one might also notice Stein uses the static verb “is” twice and several “ing” participles. Nearly half of the words are connectors (articles, conjunctions, prepositions). This combination of ing verb forms and connectors creates a breathless forward movement. Therefore, Steiny feels justified in doing away with all the punctuation and the initial capitalization.

The point of this exercise is to show that there are many ways to interact with and enjoy the writing of Gertrude Stein. Happy National Poetry Month!