Gertrude Stein - Tender Buttons - Objects

Gertrude Stein – Tender Buttons - Objects

In A Long Dress, A Fire and A White Hunter, the theme in these three poems seemed to reference colors. But, one could interpret these poems to be associated to people as Gertrude Stein was said to have wrote in an abstract style. Her poems in “Tender Buttons” reflected the modern trend and abstract work that her friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso had painted. Her friendship with Ernest Hemingway did seem to impact her writings as well. You could say that her work was an experiment of verbal abstract interpretations.

In “A Long Dress” “Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.” (126) Even in a rainbow the colors blend just a bit, but a line appears to separate them as we see each color distinctly. People are like rainbows where each color blends just a little, but most times we see just one color. A line defines us and we are all separated and put into categories of race and color.

In “A Fire” “What was the use of a whole time to send and not send if there was to be the kind of thing that made that come in. A letter was nicely sent.” (130) Fire could represent a person’s temperament. I have heard people mentioned someone as being “fired up” or “hot tempered.” Fire’s color consists of orange, red, blue and yellow. Fire has colors of the rainbow. I interpreted the poem to be about a friend who lost their temper or was upset.

In “A White Hunter” “A white hunter is nearly crazy.” (132) A White Hunter could be an actual friend who enjoyed hunting. Ernest Hemingway one of Gertrude Stein’s friends did like to go on safari in Africa from time to time. A hunter who could become obsessed, obsession could be seen as crazy or nearly crazy.

These three poems impressed me to be about Gertrude Stein’s friends or acquaintances. She seemed to use colors to express herself in her poems. One could also see the similarity in a visual aspect, a long dress, a fire and a white hunter. These three bring a visual representation with their titles. It is something that we can imagine, touch or cannot touch. The color association expands the poems into a wide variety of interpretations. These poems are personal to each reader as each reader will interpret them differently.

Although some would say her style was disordered Neil Schmitz stated in an article "Gertrude Stein as Post-Modernist: The Rhetoric of Tender Buttons," "In its own modet scope, a triptych of domestic objects, foods and rooms, Tender Buttons seems deliberately minor in its conceptions, bibelot, but this frame is deceptive, and orer immediately disordered." (1204)

In conclusion, these three poems have personal meanings and could relate to Gertrude Stein’s personal friends and everyone’s personal friends. The colors and visual titles were complex and yet simple. One could spend hours thinking and rethinking what she actually meant or one could just take the poem as it was written. It was truly like I was sitting in front of one of Piscasso’s paintings and wondering what he was thinking?

Works Cited:

Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives and Tender Buttons
Stilwell, Kansas: Digireads.com Publishing, 2008

Schmitz, Neil. "Gertrude Stein as Post-Modernist: The Rhetoric of Tender Buttons" Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 3, No. 5, From Modernism to Post-Modernism Indiana University (Jul. 1974) pg. 1204