Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tender Buttons
    Tender Buttons
    Tender Buttons
    Ebook61 pages56 minutes

    Tender Buttons

    By Gertrude Stein

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A classic work of experimental poetry by a titan of modernist literature

    Tender Buttons, Stein’s first published work of poetry, debuted in 1914 as a volume of powerful avant-garde expression. This meditation on ordinary living is presented in three compelling sections—“Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms”—through which Stein delights in experiments with language. Emphasizing rhythm and sonority over traditional grammar, Stein’s wordplay has garnered praise from readers and critics alike. In “A Piece of Coffee,” for example, Stein plays with conventional language and cubist imagery to produce a stunningly original literary effect:

    A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign of more is not mentioned. A piece of coffee is not a detainer. The resemblance to yellow is dirtier and distincter. The clean mixture is whiter and not coal color, never more coal color than altogether.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateOct 28, 2014
    ISBN9781497679344
    Author

    Gertrude Stein

    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was born in Pittsburgh to a prosperous German-Jewish family. She was educated in France and the United States, worked under the pioneering psychologist William James, and later studied medicine. With her brother Leo she was an important patron of the arts, acquiring works by many contemporary artists, most famously Picasso, while her home became a popular meeting place for writers and painters from Matisse to Hemingway. Her books include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

    Read more from Gertrude Stein

    Related to Tender Buttons

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Reconsidering Pablo Neruda in Light of ‘The Poet’s Calling’

      Jun 4, 2018

      When Pablo Neruda was expelled from France in 1952, he wrote this to his beloved countrymen in Chile: “The future of humanity may be endangered in the hands of a few evil men, but it does not belong to them. The future of man is ours, because we are

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fifteen Poets on Revision

      Feb 27, 2018

      After 17 drafts over two weeks, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” was completed on November 4, 1975. The poem began as notes, and evolved into a villanelle. She changed the title. She deleted words. She reached for possible rhymes. Brett Candlish Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      Poet Mary Oliver Dies at 83

      Jan 17, 2019

      Poet Mary Oliver Dies at 83
      2 min read

    • Article

      On Louise Glück

      Dec 1, 2021

      I WAS LYING in bed late at night, woeful, confused by another death, this one the death of a close friend; the losses had been mounting steadily, a bewildering number of losses, each one specific, difficult to accept, hard to overcome, and I must hav

      12 min read

    • Article

      A Poet’s Craft

      Jan 1, 2020

      To begin with a definition: A poem is a text structurally constrained by the repetition of any language element(s). The continuum of poetic constraint is extensive, stretching from operations that a reader will find completely imperceptible to overwh

      9 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2019

      Sep 5, 2019

      Eight new and notable collections you want on your nightstand this month, including work by a lost Catalan master and the latest from our new poet laureate. The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Restless Herd

      Apr 14, 2021

      Restless Herd
      21 min read

    • Article

      Elephant In The City Of Blind

      Feb 6, 2020

      Elephant In The City Of Blind
      5 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: Air By Victoria Adukwei Bulley

      Jun 6, 2022

      Air Friend, I saw you sittingat the window of yourself high up in the loftwatching it all go on without you. I was ice & you were almost shadow.I waved like a child on a passing boat. Unsure of whether or not this countsI want us to remember the unr

      3 min read

    • Article

      An Artist of Our Social Age

      Sep 1, 2022

      An Artist of Our Social Age
      10 min read

    • Article

      All The Gay Saints

      May 1, 2020

      All The Gay Saints
      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Charles Baudelaire

      Jun 9, 2020

      After my friend and I left the tobacco shop, he carefully sorted his loose change; slipped some small gold coins in his left jacket pocket; into the right went the silver pieces; in his left pants pocket, a handful of centimes; and in the right, a si

      2 min read

    • Article

      David Berman, Slacker God

      Aug 8, 2019

      David Berman, Slacker God
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tender Buttons

    4/5

    6 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Ah, modernism. The point is that you will not understand. Well, alright, that's not the entire point, but that's part of the point. Stein takes words and arranges them in a deliberately weird way, experimenting with and stretching the confines of language to inspire new ways of looking at words we use every day. It's not about making sense in a logical narrative way, but if you read it aloud there is a sort of sense to the rhythm and the way the words will slide off your tongue and it's intriguing and weird (in a good way) to say the least. I went through it again and again and started highlighting random strings of words that caught my eye, because you wouldn't find these combinations of words elsewhere but they're great, such as:"...a single hurt color." (p.3)"A not torn rose-wood color." (p5)and"...every bit of blue is precocious."(p. 7)or a single frantic sullenness." (p. 13)Some is fantastically nonsense, such as:"The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision." (p 12)"Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolds and reckless reckless rats, this is this." (p 15)and"A receptacle and a symbol and no monster were present and no more." (p. 25)Yet some of it seems to make very good sense, such as:"What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it.""...there is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense."and "A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that." (p. 4)"Kindness is not earnest, it is not assiduous it is not revered." (p. 22)and my personal favourite:"a description is not a birthday." (p.22) - make of that what you will.
    • 1/5
      At the risk of sounding uneducated - this book is gibberish. It reminds me of the old story of the Emperor's New Clothes. Intellectuals all say it's a masterpiece, so everyone else agrees. All the while, even the intellectuals are saying "what the heck?" when they (try to) read it. But nobody wants to admit it because then they'll sound like an idiot.
    • 5/5
      "Cutting shade, cool spades and little last beds, make violet, violet when." One of my very favorite books to read aloud for pleasure on sunny lazy weekend mornings over breakfast, or late into the evening with wine. The linguistic equivalent of putting on a jazz album or painting the room a new color--gratifies the senses and as Thoreau put it, "affect[s] the quality of the day" (which is "the highest of the arts"). I have a feeling Stein had a good idea of how to live well in the day to day, no matter what. And if it's any confirmation, the Alice B. Toklas cookbook seems to color everything as well.

    Book preview

    Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein

    Tender Buttons

    Gertrude Stein

    OBJECTS

    A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

    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.

    GLAZED GLITTER.

    Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover.

    The change in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.

    There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine. There can be breakages in Japanese. That is no programme. That is no color chosen. It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing. It certainly showed no obligation and perhaps if borrowing is not natural there is some use in giving.

    A SUBSTANCE IN A CUSHION.

    The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.

    Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume.

    A cushion has that cover. Supposing you do not like to change, supposing it is very clean that there is no change in appearance, supposing that there is regularity and a costume is that any the worse than an oyster and an exchange. Come to season that is there any extreme use in feather and cotton. Is there not much more joy in a table and more chairs and very likely roundness and a place to put them.

    A circle of fine card board and a chance to see a tassel.

    What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. The question does not come before there is a quotation. In any kind of place there is a top to covering and it is a pleasure at any rate there is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense. It shows what use there is in a whole piece if one uses it and it is extreme and very likely the little things could be dearer but in any case there is a bargain and if there is the best thing to do is to take it away and wear it and then be reckless be reckless and resolved on returning gratitude.

    Light blue and the same red with purple makes a change. It shows that there is no mistake. Any pink shows that and very likely it is reasonable. Very likely there should not be a finer fancy present. Some increase means a calamity and this is the best preparation for three and more being together. A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that.

    A seal and matches and a swan and ivy and a suit.

    A closet, a closet does not connect under the bed. The band if it is white and black, the band has a green string. A sight a whole sight and a little groan grinding makes a trimming such a sweet singing trimming and a red thing not a round thing but a white thing, a red thing and a white thing.

    The disgrace is not in carelessness nor even in sewing it comes out out of the way.

    What is the sash like. The sash is not like anything mustard it is not like a same thing that has stripes, it is not even more hurt than that, it has a little top.

    A BOX.

    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. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

    A PIECE OF COFFEE.

    More of double.

    A place in no new table.

    A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1