When my flight touched down in Paris on January 7, I felt a surge of poetic inspiration. It had been 24 hours since I’d slept, but it followed me to the rental car agency and down the A6 as I drove from Charles de Gaulle to Fontainebleau, where we’d be living for the next year. Just 15 minutes away from the airport, the buildings dropped off and we were surrounded by fields, a clear reminder that we weren’t in New York anymore. We entered roundabout after roundabout, and then a stretch of tree-lined streets leading into the town of Fontainebleau.
France has a long-standing reputation as a country that inspires poets and artists—from Gertrude Stein, to Rimbaud, to the Beat poets—I was excited to be here.
Although Gertrude Stein is one of the first poets to spring to mind when I think of American ex-pats living in France, I have never really enjoyed reading her poetry. Her writing has always seemed inventive, but inaccessible. After getting settled in Fontainebleau, I thought I would try to read some of her works again.
Her memoir, titled Paris France, seemed like an apt place to start. Perhaps by looking at a bit of this story and at one of her shorter poems, not far from where they were written, I would be able to better understand her words and her writing style. As Tender Buttons is so well-renowned, I re-read the poem “A Box” from this book.
A BOX.
A large box is handily made of what is necessary to replace any substance. Suppose an example is necessary, the plainer it is made the more reason there is for some outward recognition that there is a result.
A box is made sometimes and them to see to see to it neatly and to have the holes stopped up makes it necessary to use paper.
A custom which is necessary when a box is used and taken is that a large part of the time there are three which have different connections. The one is on the table. The two are on the table. The three are on the table. The one, one is the same length as is shown by the cover being longer. The other is different there is more cover that shows it. The other is different and that makes the corners have the same shade the eight are in singular arrangement to make four necessary.
Lax, to have corners, to be lighter than some weight, to indicate a wedding journey, to last brown and not curious, to be wealthy, cigarettes are established by length and by doubling.
Left open, to be left pounded, to be left closed, to be circulating in summer and winter, and sick color that is grey that is not dusty and red shows, to be sure cigarettes do measure an empty length sooner than a choice in color.
Winged, to be winged means that white is yellow and pieces pieces that are brown are dust color if dust is washed off, then it is choice that is to say it is fitting cigarettes sooner than paper.
An increase why is an increase idle, why is silver cloister, why is the spark brighter, if it is brighter is there any result, hardly more than ever.
From Tender Buttons (1914) by Gertrude Stein.
Stein, like many poets, was very active in the art world. She maintained friendships with painters, including Picasso. One can see how the cubist style that painters, like Picasso, were exploring affected her writing. Even the title “A Box”, implies sharp edges. Like a cubist-style painting, the unconventional repetition that Stein employs consists of sharp lines that run into, or overlap, with one another. She repeats words like “box” several times, as well as “necessary”, “table”, “length”, “increase” and “brighter”. She also packs her poem full of verbs like “to be” and “is” rather than more aggressive verbs.
Stein’s writing also seems to take on a bit of a Dadaistic style here as well—like Duchamp she makes viewers/readers question the importance of her work. To this point, her memoir, Paris France, is written in a stream-of-consciousness style. It begins by describing the narrator’s impressions of the city. The memoir starts off:
Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.
I was only four years old when I was first in Paris and talked french there and was photographed there and went to school there and ate soup for early breakfast and had leg of mutton and spinach for lunch, I always liked spinach, and a black cat jumped on my mother's back...There are lots of cats in Paris and in France and they can do what they like, sit on the vegetables or among the groceries, stay in or go out. (Stein, 1)
It occurred to me after reading the start of this novel that I felt the way Stein was writing: scattered and full of sensory overload. The initial excitement of being somewhere new had morphed into a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. A simple trip buy bread had suddenly become a challenge. As in “A Box” from Tender Buttons, Stein plays with repetition, using words like “cats” and “Paris” frequently throughout the text. Once again, the words she chooses to repeat are basic, and are often used in everyday speech. In writing about a place that is new and foreign to her, Stein uses the same jolting language one would use when learning a new language. While the passage is a description from the viewpoint of a child, perhaps she also uses basic language and repetition to explore the way that people learn to speak other languages—often in a jolting, stream-of-consciousness style.
Stein’s writing has always been controversial. The repetition throughout the text, and the way in which she structures her sentences, can seem almost threatening. She peppers her poetry with ominous and often ambiguous sentences, like “there are three on the table”. In poems like “A Box”, the reader has to wonder what is inside the boxes that she refers to—at times she mentions cigarettes, and at other times, she gives an image of a “large box”. In both of the examples seen here, Stein defies conventional writing style.
While I still struggle with the lack of linear paragraphs in Stein’s writing, one has to admire the unique style in which she wrote. In a place where I often find myself speaking French in the same way that Stein begins her memoir in English, I may have a newfound respect for her writing.
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