Gertrude Stein

Repetition in Gertrude Stein’s Lifting Belly is all through out the work. In fact, a major portion of how the reader understands the work depends on repetition. “Kiss my lips. She did. /Kiss my lips again she did. /Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did” (20). Lifting Belly is about love and the striving for that love. The repetition in “Kiss my lips” shows the ache, the need and wanting of the speaker. This ache is the honesty in Stein’s poetry is what the reader is really drawn to, the repetition is the vehicle.

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From Tender Buttons:

A CARAFE THAT IS A BLIND GLASS

A kind in a glass and cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and arrangement in a system pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not trembling. The difference is spreading.

(Stein, 1-6)

I have read some of the academic reading of this work. I understand there is a Cubist element to Tender Buttons, which adds to its ambiguity. There are some theorists who will say poetry is about showing a message, clearly and concisely. This is simply not so. Poems can be ambiguous, and in some cases should be, to force the reader to actually read below the surface of the words. When Cubist ideals are thrown into the mix, with distorted images and twisted thoughts, this can only make the poetry all the more rich. The work is susceptible to being misread and underread and overread in any analysis. And, that's not a bad thing.