Another Radical Domestic
I am a huge fan of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons for its unhinging and re-joining of syntax in a screwy prose poem format, for its re-drawing the intimate and feminized world of the domestic space in such a way as to confuse gendered assumptions and to prioritize and re-value the details, the difficult and joyous work of making home, building relationships, feeding ourselves, pleasing our eyes and fingers, and finding likenesses and differences. To this day, I still count it as my favorite work of poetry.
I recently re-visited a book that strikes sympathetic chords for me, takes up a kindred spirit. Here are a few extended excerpts:
There's the bathtub. Look at it, caustically rejecting its smug proposal. Ponder removedly the herculean task of a bath. There's much camaraderie in filth but it's no' that. And change is lightsome but it's not that either. Fresh linen with a dab here, there of the wet paw serves me better. Take a stripling stroking chin-fuzz, match his heart against that of grandpa watching his silver wane. When these two are compatible I'll plunge in. But where's the edge lifted between sunlight and moonlight. Where does lamplight cease to nick it? Here's hot water.
Security, solidity -- we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it. You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the rich but the truth is you're turning toward authority yourself, to say nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what I saw in the kitchen last night -- overlook the girl a moment: there over the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most, (3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing. You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing? Quit phrase making -- that is, not of course -- but you will understand me or if not -- why -- come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is concerned.
I like the boy. It's years back I began to draw him to me -- or he was pushed my way by the others. And what if there's no sleep because the bed's burning; is that a reason to send a chap to Greystone! Greystone! There's a name if you have any tatter of mind left in you. It's the long back, narrowing that way at the waist perhaps whets the chisel in me. How the flanks flutter and the heart races. Imagination! That's the worm in the apple. What if it runs to paralyses and blind fires, here's sense loose in a world set on foundations. Blame buzzards for the eyes they have.
-- all from Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920)by William Carlos Williams
The same stretching of language in a supposedly lucid format (the sentence, the paragraph), the associative layering of meaning, the meeting of public and private understandings, the foregrounding of bodies and their language: all these echo Tender Buttons for me and gird one of the core ways I look at the world and how to navigate it.
So glad to have re-found this on my shelves.
I recently re-visited a book that strikes sympathetic chords for me, takes up a kindred spirit. Here are a few extended excerpts:
There's the bathtub. Look at it, caustically rejecting its smug proposal. Ponder removedly the herculean task of a bath. There's much camaraderie in filth but it's no' that. And change is lightsome but it's not that either. Fresh linen with a dab here, there of the wet paw serves me better. Take a stripling stroking chin-fuzz, match his heart against that of grandpa watching his silver wane. When these two are compatible I'll plunge in. But where's the edge lifted between sunlight and moonlight. Where does lamplight cease to nick it? Here's hot water.
Security, solidity -- we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it. You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the rich but the truth is you're turning toward authority yourself, to say nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what I saw in the kitchen last night -- overlook the girl a moment: there over the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most, (3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing. You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing? Quit phrase making -- that is, not of course -- but you will understand me or if not -- why -- come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is concerned.
I like the boy. It's years back I began to draw him to me -- or he was pushed my way by the others. And what if there's no sleep because the bed's burning; is that a reason to send a chap to Greystone! Greystone! There's a name if you have any tatter of mind left in you. It's the long back, narrowing that way at the waist perhaps whets the chisel in me. How the flanks flutter and the heart races. Imagination! That's the worm in the apple. What if it runs to paralyses and blind fires, here's sense loose in a world set on foundations. Blame buzzards for the eyes they have.
-- all from Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920)by William Carlos Williams
The same stretching of language in a supposedly lucid format (the sentence, the paragraph), the associative layering of meaning, the meeting of public and private understandings, the foregrounding of bodies and their language: all these echo Tender Buttons for me and gird one of the core ways I look at the world and how to navigate it.
So glad to have re-found this on my shelves.