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jacobbou's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
mastro1022's review against another edition
3.0
As difficult to rate as it is difficult to read. I would not recommend embarking on this book without either a professor to study with or a working knowledge of Stein’s life and works (I had both). The way she uses language is truly incredible and beautiful much of the time, but I don’t always want to decipher every word in order to glean meaning from a poem. Perhaps the way it rolls off the tongue is enough.
grayjay's review against another edition
2.0
Tender Buttons is a collection of prose poems divided into three sections: objects, food, and rooms. The poems themselves make very little sense as they experiment with idiosyncratic grammer and a 'cubist' view of each subject.
She displaces the objects from their familiar context. Apparently, the purpose is to disassociate the reader from any expected interpretation of the object, destroying the relationship between the signified and signifier.
Not any easy read. I sort of skimmed it.
She displaces the objects from their familiar context. Apparently, the purpose is to disassociate the reader from any expected interpretation of the object, destroying the relationship between the signified and signifier.
Not any easy read. I sort of skimmed it.
lsparrow's review against another edition
1.0
I found the style of poems too abstract for me to connect to. It felt like one of those pictures that you are supposed to see something 3D jump out at you when you look with the correct focus - those never work for me - I always feel I am almost there but can never do it.
casparb's review against another edition
5.0
2023!!!! she keeps! its true and I just find, more every year ., a sideways love,.,, act so that there is no use in a centre
2022Reread this lovely I adore her so much & look I wrote a review, stumbling as it is, back in 2020 which I'm not writing over (palimpsestically!) for once. Diagonal prose
2020:
All sorts of strangeness & obscurity. So experimental, yet so early - it has been suggested that this experimental masterpiece was ignored due to Stein's being a woman.
I'm sure anyone that tries to read this will blink at the first page and question whether it is worth pursuing. It's undeniably a difficult work, crab-like in such a way that reminds me of Derrida's 'diagonal prose'. A possible key to this book is to (attempt to) read it rhizomatically. It is centreless.
I was reminded at times of the poems of W.S. Graham - I think this is because both Stein and Graham were literary figures that associated with sculptors and painters, rather than with poets. There is something in the defamiliarised, abstract descriptions of objects that reminds me of modernist sculpture. All is extension and shape - a practice often neglected by writers.
2022Reread this lovely I adore her so much & look I wrote a review, stumbling as it is, back in 2020 which I'm not writing over (palimpsestically!) for once. Diagonal prose
2020:
All sorts of strangeness & obscurity. So experimental, yet so early - it has been suggested that this experimental masterpiece was ignored due to Stein's being a woman.
I'm sure anyone that tries to read this will blink at the first page and question whether it is worth pursuing. It's undeniably a difficult work, crab-like in such a way that reminds me of Derrida's 'diagonal prose'. A possible key to this book is to (attempt to) read it rhizomatically. It is centreless.
I was reminded at times of the poems of W.S. Graham - I think this is because both Stein and Graham were literary figures that associated with sculptors and painters, rather than with poets. There is something in the defamiliarised, abstract descriptions of objects that reminds me of modernist sculpture. All is extension and shape - a practice often neglected by writers.