Yikes, this has taken a little bit longer to get started than I envisioned as I hadn't envisioned my daughter having three new molars come in! Anyway, here's a bit on Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, at least the first entry:
Tender Buttons First off, tender buttons? “Tender” is about as unexpected an adjective to pair with “buttons” as I can imagine. What’s the move? Buttons as indicative of meaningless, random objects? Minutiae? To make them tender is to make them cared about? To give them life.
Objects
A carafe, that is a blind glass: Brief, prose-poemesque. In form, an indented paragraph composed of, essentially, prose. But look at the language: “a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing (…) The difference is spreading.” This is clearly oblique language intended for something other than description. So, what exactly is going on? A system of pointing could be the system of representation, of symbol and metaphor, perhaps of language itself as trying to represent, to be the things it names.
When caffeine and reading poetry collide...close reads of poems and other poetic/literary moments
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