ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! Yes, the next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 8, 2018, and will conclude on November 19, 2018. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 8 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end. If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive. ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.
watch video on Stein's "If I Told Him"
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From the course by University of Pennsylvania
Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)
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From the lesson
chapter 2.3 (week 4)—the rise of poetic modernism: Stein
<p><b>Week 4 of ModPo 2018 runs from Sunday, September 30 at 9 AM through Sunday, October 7 at 9 AM. </b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 4 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>Gertrude Stein's contribution to modernist poetry and poetics cannot be overstated, so now, in the third section of chapter 2, we turn to her, spending the better part of week 4 of our course on a selection of her supposedly “difficult” writings. The difficulty of deriving any sort of conventional semantic meaning from the short prose-poems that comprise Stein's Tender Buttons turns out for many readers to be a helpful inducement to look for other kinds of signifying. As we hope you'll see from the video discussions in this section, such difficulty need not excuse us from close reading. Stein's poems really can be interpreted. They might reject representation, but by no means do they turn away from reference. The hard work you do in this part of chapter 2 will be amply rewarded when we get to chapter 9. Stein is a particular influence on John Ashbery in chapter 8, but she is a crucial influence on nearly every poet we'll read in chapter 9. As a matter of fact, here in chapter 2 we have a chance to listen to Jackson Mac Low (a chapter 9 poet) talk about why he finds Stein's opaque and difficult Tender Buttons so nonetheless meaningful. And we hear Joan Retallack (another chapter 9 poet) paying homage to Stein's “Composition as Explanation.”</p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS:</b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #2 should be submitted any time between 9 AM on 10/1/18 and 9 AM on 10/7/18; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 10/8/18 and 9 AM on 10/14/18. <em>There is also a live webcast on Thursday, October 4, at 6:30 PM (local time) — we will be coming to you live from our annual "on the road" webcast, and we welcome ModPo’ers in or visiting the area to join us!</em></p>
Meet the Instructors
Al FilreisKelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House
So we're going to be dealing now with Gertrude Stein's famous verbal,
poetic, poem portrait of Picasso, Pablo Picasso.
All right, so what kind of portrait is it?
Emily, right off the top of your head.
What kind of portrait is it?
>> It's a verbal portrait.
>> It's a verbal portrait.
As opposed to an oil painting.
>> A pictorial portrait.
>> Could you imagine a verbal portrait that tries to do what a traditional
painted portrait does?
>> Sure. >> Sure what would it be like?
>> Realistic language.
>> Descriptive.
>> Descriptive.
>> Visually descriptive maybe.
>> Yes.
>> But what other kinds of portraits are there?
Verbal portraits.
A biography of George Washington could be said to
be a portrait of George Washington, or Napoleon.
And it would it start?
>> At his birth.
>> And move through his inevitable rise to power and then his decline.
A nice spark, right?
This isn't that.
What is it?
Dave, what is it?
>> It's more of a cubist verbal painting.
She's trying to replicate more of a realistic life mess
than just a straight narrative, a straight cause and effect.
>> You used the word realistic.
>> Whoa, I think most people would
see the word realism referring to Tolstoy and George Eliot.
That's realism, how could this be realism?
>> Because she still is referring to something, she's not abstracting it out.
It's not abstract in that sense,
it still something that she's trying to just describe in a different way.
>> Describe in a different way.
Kristen, what ways?
How is she describing it, is she describing?
>> She's coming at it from all the different angles, and
kind of twisting the words around.
So every line, in a lot of the lines, they just change very slightly.
And if you listen to a recording it's very impressive how she does it,
because I feel like if I were trying to read this out loud I wouldn't be able to,
because it's such a tongue twister.
because it's just such, such slight differences between each line.
>> Mm-hm, so let's go back to the basics though.
So, what is she doing?
How would you describe or characterize what kind of portrait she's doing?
Anna?
>> Well, if we think about what she
said in the prose paragraphs we looked at earlier, she talks about repeating.
>> Mm-hm.
>> How repetition you can sort of make slight differences,
like Kristen was saying to try and get it right, to try and approximate.
I think that I've sort of imagined this kind of like Dave was saying, too.
If you think about a Cubist painting and
you have all of those little infinitesimal fractures.
I think about each of these different parts of the poem, I think about the would
he like it with Napoleon, Napoleon would he like it and then now, and now.
I think of each of those has a different kind of fracture, angle,
swath of color, line.
>> So not as a word with semantic meaning but
as a As a- >> This is hard to do.
>> Approximation.
>> Approximation?
Translate the media, we have Cubist painting,
who's a good example of a Cubist painter at certain points?
>> Picasso and Braque.
>> Yeah, Picasso!
Let's just say Picasso, why would Braque be relevant to this?
Let's talk about Picasso, okay.
So Picasso would be an instance of a painter who does what in
a Cubist portrait?
>> Takes a rounded shape and flattens it out.
>> Okay. >> And gives you all of its elements on
the same plate- >> When you're just a middlebrow, or
any kind of citizen of the world and you come to a museum and
you see a Picasso portrait and you've never seen cubism before you say what?
>> That's non-representational.
>> Or, what question would you ask?
>> What is this?
>> What is this? >> Or how is this what it is.
>> So this is a portrait of that woman that's in the title,
that man that's in the title, but I can't see that man.
Okay, now, you're standing next to that person and you say, hey buddy.
What do you say?
Actually, buddy, it's.
>> Well, I don't know.
That's the point.
>> Okay, and what would you say?
Hey buddy. Molly, what would you say?
>> The sum of the angles is greater than the whole.
[LAUGH] The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
>> Okay, what does that mean?
>> That it's actually more accurate to take all the different angles and
all the different fractions of a picture,
of a person then to try to represent them exactly in words.
>> Okay, that's good enough.
Now, try to do it in words.
What's the analogous function for words?
It's a rough analogy.
The canvas would be equal to the piece of paper
that goes into a typewriter or is written on.
That's okay.
It's very this thing, this inter-art thing gets harder after that.
The hand holding the pen or
the fingers pushing down the keys is equivalent to the hand holding the brush.
So far we're okay.
Now it gets hard.
What is the equivalent of the stuff that's on the edge of the paint hairs, the brush.
What's at the edge of the brush?
What is that equivalent of?
And what is the equivalent of the little shard like pieces in the Cubist portrait
in this.
Anybody want to try any of those, Amorice?
>> Maybe the words become the materials for the actual construction so instead of
focusing on their symantic meaning we're focusing on their form and color.
>> Form and color.
>> Or their sound and shape and he or she's,
that destabilizes the subject-object relationship,
because in the way that a cubist painting represents all the perspectives at once.
It isn't like an oil painting from before where
the person is distinctly positioned in their contemporary time.
In front of that painting, we're looking from a certain angle.
All those angles are happening at the same time and
he or she's trying to do that same thing.
>> Difficult to do.
Okay, so why is it appropriate for
her to do a completed portrait of Pablo Picasso in this way?
It's not just the completed portrait of George Washington, no.
Gertrude Stein did her modernistic thing with old George,
who's always been depicted as the guy standing in the rowboat
crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve, or whenever it was, Christmas Day.
She's not doing this to George Washington, she's doing it to Pablo Picasso.
Commensurate?
Appropriate?
Why, why, why?
>> She's portraying Picasso as he would portray.
>> She's doing what Picasso would do.
That's different from saying let's say I'm Robert Carrow and
I'm biographer of LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
I'm not a Texan.
I'm a Jew. I'm Jewish, Robert Carrow is.
I don't know anything about the life of LBJ so I do my Carrow thing on LBJ.
All right, I don't do an LBJ thing.
If it was an LBJ thing, who knows what kind of biography it would be.
So Stein is kind of giving up the subject position of Stein, although not so
much because they're similar.
And doing Picasso idn oing Picasso, does this resonate at all, what?
>> That's like Frank Sullivan was saying, form follows function.
>> Form follows function, sure.
But more specifically than that.
>> If you're going to do a portrait of Picasso you have to do it.
>> Do Picasso.
>> You have to do Picasso, you can't- >> So the best way.
To do Picasso would be to do Picasso, not to do Stein doing Picasso, do Picasso.
>> You can't talk about Lincoln a Man of the People in this not Man of the People
language.
>> Perfect, well, let's just call that the 19th century fallacy,
right, that form doesn't have to be commensurate with subject matter.
In this case, it is.
So let's just, why do we get all this stuff,
let's talk about he he he and he and he what's going on in that line?
He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and
as and as he and as he and he, what do you do with that?
What are some interpretations that are possible, Dave, start us off.
>> Sure sounds like someone's laughing.
>> Okay, laughter, good, a kind of glee, this is fun, I love doing this.
Okay, keep going.
>> And the he gets cut off from the verb so it always seems to be in process and
interrupted by the repetition of the conjunction.
>> Maybe commensurate with Picasso there, maybe not,
doesn't have to be, but- >> Well, I think it's a translation of
that medium, so she's saying that the way we've learned to read a visual painting-
>> Okay,
why the word he as opposed to Paul?
>> Because it's a pronoun and she's- >> Is it a female pronoun?
>> No, it's a masculine one that she's cutting off.
>> So she's laughing and also, let's just say Picasso was very masculine.
There's a way in which he he he and he, she's messing with the male pronoun.
Any other connotations of he?
>> Well, it's an enumeration, she's indicating him and
she's indicating many hims.
And considering it is like a multiperspectival thing,
why not point to him again and again and again from a different direction.
>> Good, let's go back to who comes first, Napoleon the first,
what does Napoleon have to do with any of this?
Uh-oh, we don't know, right?
>> Well, [LAUGH] it could have to do with Picasso's power in the art world.
>> So, are you saying,
that Stein is saying, that implicitly that Picasso is Napoleonic?
>> I think so, I think he had a very large
personality from what I've read and- >> A little man with a large
personality, maybe?
Creative energy- >> But I think part of what she's
doing too is just playing with the sound- >> The empire of modern art-
>> Yeah, was it Parloff that said that,
I know I read that.
[LAUGH] >> I think it's Ulagaido who suggested
that to us, yeah.
>> I think she's saying that Picasso's disrupting the traditional hierarchy of
art the way that Napoleon did with all his conquests.
So in the way that she is trying to undermine that ordered nature of language
that has worked up unto this point- >> And
history >> She's saying that, exactly,
especially history, Napoleon's a historical figure.
>> I had a college professor who was from the South and used to say,
when we were studying Shakespeare, y'all ought to know the kings of England.
Translation, you should know the kings of England in order.
I'm not sure why, actually, it had to do with understanding the history place.
So I started to study the kings of England in order as if that would give me some
historical notion.
It implies a certain cause and effect, but
when you go from Elizabeth to James there's a rupture there.
There's more rupture there than there is continuity, the crown gets continued.
So when you're talking about emperors, who came first, Napoleon the first.
She's talking about the kind of self fulfillment and circularity of history.
If she's creating analogy to Picasso, then what?
We're sort of getting there already, but let's say Picasso and
Gertrude Stein, for instance, in their relationship.
Who came first, Napoleon the first.
Does anybody sense some kind of deconstruction of
artistic history and of influence?
Is it possible, art historian?
What is she saying about Picasso and invention,
and who came first, and all that?
>> I think who came first is always a tough question when you
talk about art because, maybe more so than history, art is continuity.
But the 20th century, especially in the beginning of it,
is such a time of change and flux and breaking and fissure and
fracture that at the time when Picasso starts the Cubist movement
that just makes all these other movements just bloom out of that.
You have a couple of different kinds of Cubism, you have Fauvism,
you have Post-Impressionism happening too.
>> So, what would Gertrude Stein, maybe, saying about who came first?
>> Well, that concurrent with that is all of this fracture in the literary world.
So, who did what, was it art first or was it writing first?
>> I think you're right, there is a kind of genre jealousy or an inter-arts rivalry
going on here, especially when you think of Gertrude Stein as doing Picasso.
I can do Picasso, you want me to do Picasso?
Go ahead, make my day, I will do a completed portrait of Picasso.
Picasso did a portrait of Gertrude Stein,
it's a rather depictive representational portrait.
I don't know when it was done, so I don't know my ordering, but
who cares about ordering here?
>> It was one of the first almost Cubist.
>> Almost cubist.
>> But people call it [CROSSTALK] >> So, now she's returning the favor, but
she's really out Picassoing Picasso.
Amarise?
>> I think she's really questioning, or
showing how arbitrary that ordering is because even when Anna was saying
all those movements were in painting, mainly, or they began there.
And I think she's trying to elude to a spreading across mediums,
in the way that she's translating painting into poetry here.
Maybe the difference that she's spreading is one just in any sort of language,
whether that be a visual medium or a linguistic medium.
>> So, portraiture is associated with the telling of history,
portraiture is associated with the proper, orderly depiction of a person,
particularly historic personage, right?
So, if she's questioning cause and effect, and she's questioning portraiture,
she's implicitly questioning history.
Whether it be diplomatic history, the history of empires,
the history of kingship, or the history of authority over aesthetic movements.
So when she says at the end, let me recite what history teaches, history teaches,
what does she mean?
Kristen, what does she mean?
It's a different sentence,
a different piece of language from the rest of the piece.
What does she mean by that?
Let me recite what history teaches, recite?
>> That's kind of strange, let me recite what history teaches, instead of saying
let me tell you what history teaches or- >> Who recites history?
>> Who, professors.
>> Someone who has to memorize things like [CROSSTALK].
>> Who recites the kings of England?
>> Yeah, someone who has them memorized.
Recite, who does one's ABC's, A to Z, who?
>> The student.
>> The student, who is socialized.
>> And so she's saying, yeah, history teaches, that history teaches us things.
>> History teaches that history's in charge.
>> Yeah, basically.
>> History teaches the cause and effect is what I say it is,
and that's what history teaches.
Does that have anything to do with portraiture,
with Picasso, with art?
Take a stab, by way of conclusion, Dave.
>> If she's really, well, I think here she's really questioning the linearity of
time as making sense as us being able to learn everything from cause and effect,
from the linearity of time.
Let me recite what history teaches, by us studying history in that way and
viewing the world as cause and effect.
That's the only way we're going to be able to view it.
>> An alternative portrait Is an alternative history.
It's Susan Howe whom we'll meet in chapter nine of this course,
who writes a book about Emily Dickinson, My Emily Dickinson.
We're reading a few passages from it.
And about Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein,
Susan Howe writes in that book that they conducted a skillful and
ironic investigation of patriarchal authority over literary history.
Who polices questions of grammar, parts of speech, connection and connotation?
Who's order is shut inside the structure of the sentence?
Let us recite what history teaches, history teaches.
This is Susan Howe,
looking back on Stein and Dickinson and trying to extract from them.
Or trying to reread them as radical questioners
of authority over cause and effect, and narrative.
And it's possible to read this poem as in part,
a celebration of Picasso as participating in that alternative.
But also as something of a satire Picasso as quickly falling
into the mode of authority over value.
And so it's possible to see Stein as out doing Picasso.
And questioning whose order is shut inside the structure of the sentence
by exposing questions of grammar.
Who sets things?
And so that's why you get the equation between Picasso and Napoleon.
But I think we've done a very earnest reading of this about
the Stein-Picasso relationship.
But can anybody, let's end by talking about, for
those of you who took pleasure in it, how much fun this is, what pleasure it is.
Who finds it to be pleasurable?
Let's hear it, Allie?
What's pleasurable?
>> Well, I mean just kind of orally,
I think it's very pleasurable but also- >> The sound, mm-hm.
>> But also in addition, it's also jarring I think,
and it's interesting because hearing it is a lot less jarring than reading it.
Especially for the he, he, he, he, and he part.
If you're trying to follow along with it, it actually kind of hurts your eyes.
>> So jarring is pleasurable?
>> Well- >> Welcome to the club.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> Yeah, and I guess it also just kind of
plays with, The notion of what
certain medium, or what different mediums,
what sense they're supposed to effect.
Because we always associate the writing and words visually to some extent.
But- >> And semantically.
We want them to mean and she liberates us from that and that's pleasurable.
Dave?
>> It's like a puzzle.
It's fun to solve.
And by solving it, you really get to
put your mind through a different process than you're used to doing.
And I think that process will always stick with you.
>> Who else wants to say something about pleasure?
Kristen? >> I think there are parts of it that
are very humorous and that's what makes it pleasurable.
Like the business about kings, the beginning, and
then it comes up again, with father and farther was the king of the room.
I think that's pretty, pretty funny.
>> Anybody else want to say something about pleasure?
>> I just like being made so uncomfortable about everything that
I know about history, language, meaning, semantics, art, history, all of it.
I think that the fact that she can do that so successfully, send us so
far over the edge and give us just enough to bring us back.
>> And I love the playful audacity of a word like completed.
A completed portrait of Pablo Picasso.
>> She's so fearless.
>> She's fearless, and she's also, she's just throwing it out there.
The line, I judge judge.
She is turning language around and making it reflexive, which is a common strategy.
She's assessing the arbiter himself.
I judge the judge.
She's turning taste making back on the taste maker.
This is what I want my art to do.
I want my art to challenge me to think about who was in charge
deciding what's beautiful.
And in a way she's saying I, Gertrude Stein, she's a genius.
But she's also kind of liberating me to make my own judgement as to whether Stein
can out Picasso Picasso.
And in so doing, admire Picasso all the more.
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