Gertrude Stein

Stein: “In Tender Buttons and then on and on I struggled with the ridding myself of nouns, I knew nouns must go in poetry as they had gone in prose if anything that is everything was to go on meaning something. And so I went on with this exceeding struggle of knowing really knowing what a thing was really knowing it knowing anything I was seeing anything I was feeling so that its name could be something, by its name coming to be a thing in itself as it was but would not be anything just and only as a name” (242).

Stein is known to be the precursor to Language Poetry. Language poetry began with the Avant Garde movement, these group of writers wanted to create a new way of looking at the world and the objects in it. This explains what Stein is saying in her quote. By getting rid of nouns she gives you no concrete or common image when you read her poetry. By ridding her writing of nouns, but still describing a thing so you know it. She tries to get people to see things in a different perspective, to go against the norm, the accepted description or function of an item.

In the poem A Box Stein’s opening line is, “A large box is handily made of what is necessary to replace any substance.” Here she creates a box how she sees and knows the object. In another poem with the same title, A Box, she writes, “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.” This shows the many different, abstract ways Stein can create one object. Stein uses cubism in her writings, like Picasso in his art. Cubism is a method of distorting reality, focusing on shapes and composite parts of an object. She is a definite Avant Garde poet. She experiments with words mixing them around in confusing sequence to create something complete different from its original meaning. She throws away old traditions to rebel against common thoughts and meanings. In her poems in Tender Buttons she takes an object and describes what her she thinks is its true meaning, what it really is. Instead of describing it as you see it in real form.

If language is a window to experience, then language poetry has the opposite effect. Stein looks for the material nature of words, the materiality, character of being matter or a visible, bland object. Language poets insist on the medium and its distance from what we are inclined to think of as “natural.” Instead, in language poetry, it can frustrate the readers experience for linear development. The overall goal of language poetry is to interrogate, subvert, or exaggerate the effects of formal logic and linguistic structures. It demonstrates how those structures have a determining influence on what we see, how we behave, and who we think we are

* The quotes from Tender Buttons have no page numbers due to using the online book from your post