Section 5.1: Prose Poetry: Gertrude Stein's Word Portraits
Required Reading
Read the entire text of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms.
Supplementary Reading
Click here to see Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein.
For background information, you may wish to consult a biography of Gertrude Stein from the University of Pennsylvania, and browse through the pages of Gertrude Stein Online.
Stein's Tender Buttons is indebted to the tradition of cubism in painting. How can a poem be like a picture? You may wish to search the Web for examples of cubist art for comparison. The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo has a short essay titled What is Cubism? Arthur Babcock at USC has created a cubist image bank with short biographies of several artists.
