Gertrude Stein

I’m starting a new blog project. Every week I will be writing on a different modern poet. By modern, I mean a poet from the 20^th century. I’ll write what I think of their lives, their works, their deaths. I’ll write about the poet and the poetry. I’ll write about Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, cubism, allergies, the color green, and much more.

Today, the poet is Gertrude Stein, and the poem is ‘Picasso.’

http://lumpy-pudding.tumblr.com/post/64566809/gertrude-stein-portrait-of-picasso

 Stein writes: “This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The whole poem goes on like so. The first three sentences are as follows:

“One whom some were certainly following was one who was completely charming. One whom some were certainly following was one who was charming. One whom some were following  was one who was completely charming.”

Stein’s poem has the form of a short story started, but not finished, by Faulkner. The sentences are long and winding, repetitive, and use the same dozen or so words.

Stein even said see wanted her poetry to have ‘sameness.’ No focal point. She preferred portraits rather than stories. ‘Picasso’ is a portrait, not a story. Not a narration. Subject matter was not important, according to Stein.

A quick way to describe Picasso’s vision: “When he saw an eye from a profiled view, the other eye did not exist.” He saw flat surfaces stripped of hidden meaning. Stein’s style is similar. She strips down her writing to words that are not representations. Language, to Stein, equals calligraphy. In other words, language or words do not represent or symbolize something, but are actually ‘the thing itself.’ The concept is that Stein utilizes what is seen, rather than what is remembered. When one sees a profile of a person, the assumption is that the other side does have an eye. Both Stein and Picasso assume nothing. There is a continual blank slate, a flat surface, which is filled before their perception by what they immediately observe. But, how does one describe Stein’s perception?

            The reader can assume that Stein’s subject is Picasso. Her poem is about an artist whose style she appreciates and deviates toward. Stein’s gaze, her perspective, her style, really has nothing to do with Picasso in the sense that he was a painter who painted this or that and lived this sort of life. Instead, her perspective in poem ‘Picasso’ is objective. Let’s return. . .

“This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The action of working can be the work of the artist painting, like Picasso. Word choice is Stein’s style. In order to be, Picasso had to be painting. The artist is being an artist when he is creating work. What is the individual itself, though? Being what? By unusual choice of words, Stein brings into question the existence of the individual with . . . “this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.” This sentence operates on different levels intellectually—it can be meta-art, if work is painting.

I'm pretty tired of writing poems that really aren't very good. Poems that don't have the quality to ever be published. Most of my writing this month has been that way, and the sooner I realize my writing this month has been below average, the sooner I'll write poems that are above average. But when this happens I'll have no clue, because writing won't be relevant to my life anymore. Soon enough, I will quit writing, expel any creativity what-so-ever from my life. There will be no more narration. The music will end. Art will imitate life. And with imitating life, art will become a parrot. A squawking remembrance of the past.

I'm tired, really, of writing the same way, the same style, the same bends and turns. I'm kind of tired of writers who repeat their cadence with every new sentence. For something different, read Laughter in the Dark or any Salinger or Thoreau. If you're into that sort of repetition that tells itself I'll do it different later, then read my past posts in August.

Maybe I should explain: "'If you're into that sort of repetition that tells itself 'I'll do it later'" means. . . if you're into a writing style, a specific brand, like a line of clothing items which are different, yet all have the same logo somewhere on them,  if you're into disguises, masks, then there cannot be any change through sweat that dissolves fat.

Anything that talks to itself convinces itself otherwise. Anything that talks to itself convinces itself of something false, usually.

"Anything that talks to itself, convinces itself," said the conscious to the man in a black overcoat.

This one even puzzles me.

I Listen to Sound

Smoke lingers as the moon rises,
and the light wanes for a quarter hour.
Smoke lingers from my cigarette.
Night will soon be complete,
and I'll sleep like this smoke.

The harsh difference
between summer air and air conditioning
irritates me
like the slap from an ex-girlfriend.

I want to laugh, but can't
like the stale taste of dinner's coffee.

However, this is it.
From tip to tip,
ear to ear,
I listen to sound.

I hear my voice searching for my ears.

Semi-Connected to August 9 Post

Love is a Driver Without a Passenger

I met you outside
to return your apartment key.
There was a warm, August rain between us.
You laughed as I high stepped bare foot
through grass and mud to your car.

It rained down on everything.
Claps of thunder sounded.
I couldn't hear a thing but your laugh,
or see a thing but a slight profile,
distant like the faded faces on coins,
through the car's fogged and cracked window.

You drove off as I stood there.
I couldn't help but wonder
what your car looked like in the
bumper to bumper world
of traffic in the rain.

It was very hot today

How I would read this upcoming poem: 5 vignettes that are connected together.



100 Degrees

The grass is dead.
Street workers handle shovels
and some drink from cans.
Heat waves rise from asphalt.

I let the electrician into an empty apartment.
The wooden floors are warped
and dirty from vacancy.

Outside the back window,
a child glides half-nude
down an aluminum slide.
Clothes hang from a line.

Sweat hangs from my glasses.
It must be 100 degrees.
Someone has written and left MOM
into the dirt of a window.

The electrician, wearing fire-proof gloves,
has his hand deep into a heater.

New news on the home-front: new poem.


Moving Clouds   


Tonight, a commercial airplane passes overhead
as I continue fishing.
No luck tonight, and its utterly dark.
The grass is soaked, my socks wet,
and I keep losing my train of thought.
It begins someplace,
and ends up somewhere else.
Then, I return to fishing.
To my bait colliding with small sunken rocks
on the bottom of the pond.
I wonder if, comparatively, I'm a true fisherman.
Who would say?
My eyes coast around the pond.
Light emerges in places.
One man wears a miner's light.
Finally, the Big Dipper
emerges boldly from a series of clouds.

Here, On the Outskirts

New poem of the week. I wish I could be like those bloggers who have a poem of the week. But alas, you, ACorkAndABottle, have no structure. Screw it, I'm done free-writing. Here is, again, my poem of the week.


Here, On the Outskirts


Lightning flashes
silently white
on the horizon over the city.
It has already rained here, on the outskirts.
Alley street lamps blur.
Pavements glisten from slick oil,
and there is not a sound within earshot.
Silence, so it seems--
a suspicious companion.

Any second now someone will shout in the distance.
Slowly, it will begin again.