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SJane

SJane

Currently reading

Almost No Memory
Lydia Davis
Selected Poems
Philippe Jaccottet
The Tiger's Wife
Téa Obreht
Charles Dickens (Penguin Lives)
Jane Smiley
The Mansion of Happiness
Robin Ekiss
Schriften
Erik Satie
Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein This left me cold. It's one of those books where I feel I'm not even being asked to understand. It is interesting I suppose, in the context of the cubism Stein admired, to see how she takes things apart, turning them over in her hands like a rubik's cube. Except we don't get any closer to the thing being examined. Some of these prose poems are amusing in their way and sometimes jolting, but mostly they are befuddling or simply dull. Sorry. It's a case of the emperor's new clothes for me.

I think of Francis Ponge or Antonin Artaud, who was a lunatic, and what they did so wonderfully with prose poetry, and all I can say is I'm glad I got "Tender Buttons" for 50 cents. (I mention them because they're French, and Stein lived in France, and their lives overlapped with hers.)


Here are a couple excerpts, randomly chosen:

An Umbrella

Coloring high means that the strange reason is in front not more in front behind. Not more in front in peace of the dot.

Pastry

Cutting shade, cool spades and little last beds, make violet, violet when.