Tender Buttons: Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

A century after Gertrude Stein wrote Tender Buttons the text has been newly formatted, with a view to it being more sympathetically read as prose poetry, in contrast to the original setting of the 1914 edition and the various subsequent editions. Here it becomes evident that in her plastic, collagist use of language Stein was arguing for a purist shaking off of redundant associations and judgements into a thing free of cliché or manipulation. Funny, poetic and multifaceted, this is a text to read in and around, the sense arriving on a wave of rhythm, sound, and harmony.