Today’s poem for National Poetry Month is from Gertrude
Stein.
I do not have a particularly close relationship with
Stein as a writer; rather, I’ve always been interested in her as a patron of
the arts and an ex-pat historical figure, an American Jew living in France who managed to wait
out the Nazi occupation without losing either her life or her collection of
modernist art.
I’ve enjoyed The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and a while ago I read a couple of
decent biographies of her. But I’ll confess I find her non-representational
poetic style difficult to assimilate.
(Although, as a cultural observer she certainly got
Oakland right when she mused, “There’s no there there.” She’d lived in the city;
she knew what she was talking about.)
And I’ll give it up to my Hungarian-born
French professor: if you want to take in one of Stein’s poems, you should
really listen to it, because you can’t separate the sounds from…well, whatever
it is I think she means.
Here’s Stein reading "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso".
When I listen to this and think about the
paintings Picasso did while Stein was one of his patrons, it somehow makes
sense, although I couldn’t analyse it for you.
If you feel you just have to read it, you can find it here.
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