Tender Buttons

poetry by Stein

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Article History

Tender Buttons, book of poems by Gertrude Stein, first published in 1914 as Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms.

Heavily influenced by Cubism, the poetry in this work was considered by some critics to have taken abstraction and fragmentation past the limits of comprehensibility. The poems are dense and obscure and are devoid of conventional logic, syntax, and grammar. Rather than using conventional ways of conveying meaning and impressions, Stein juggles the sequence of the sounds of words to make verbal still lifes.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.