Modernist Poetry and Gertrude Stein
I've encountered Gertrude Stein before, but that does not make her any less "unfamiliar" to me. Her writing style seems to be just putting words on a page, only with regard to the word that came before, but with no particular overall context. Going through a few of her poems, I can say with almost complete certainty that there is very little meaning to her poems besides the fact that she could write them if she so desired. For example, we can look at part of her poem, 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."
Reading the poem, my eyes keep sliding through the words as if they have meaning only to realize after I've finished them, I have consumed no real information. Stein's poetry isn't unfamiliar to me in the way that a place or a person is unfamiliar to me, as those are things that I believe I may one day find out the meaning or purpose or story of. Stein's poetry is unfamiliar to me in a way that I believe I will never truly know the story of what engaged her to write such a piece. The unfamiliarity is almost magnetic as it only makes me want to understand it more, but should I try, I know it would only be in vain.
"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."
Reading the poem, my eyes keep sliding through the words as if they have meaning only to realize after I've finished them, I have consumed no real information. Stein's poetry isn't unfamiliar to me in the way that a place or a person is unfamiliar to me, as those are things that I believe I may one day find out the meaning or purpose or story of. Stein's poetry is unfamiliar to me in a way that I believe I will never truly know the story of what engaged her to write such a piece. The unfamiliarity is almost magnetic as it only makes me want to understand it more, but should I try, I know it would only be in vain.
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