how to read gertrude stein's tender buttons

i was in an experimental poetry workshop by anne boyer this summer (an amazing class that i highly recommend to anybody, whether you're actually fixated on poetry like me, or even if you don't care about poetry but are just looking for a super fun way to get a lit credit)

the first thing we did in that class was read tender buttons, and our first homework was to answer the question, "how are you supposed to read tender buttons?" this could be answered in a set of directions, or in a frame of reference, or any way you wanted to answer it. claire brankin, for instance, if i recall, wrote that you were supposed to read "food" as a recipe. etc.

here was my answer:

do not read tender buttons alone. read tender buttons over someone's shoulder, or they over yours, so that you are scrolling or turning pages hesitantly, trying to predict where they are, re-reading and jumping ahead to keep up with a speed you can't predict. be constantly aware of the fact that you're reading. alternate between speed-reading, eyes zagging across the lines, and slow-reading, letting the voice in your head self-consciously pronounce every word silently behind your mouth. preoccupy yourself not only with the text and your own thoughts but with unshared predictions of your partner's parallel thought-trains. try to think totally around everything, back and forth, all in the instants between words, the speed, the meaning, the text, the repetition, every possible way you and your companion can interpret things and every relationship and juxtaposition between your two readings. all while you're still trying to decide when to scroll down.

the next day in class, we had all brought objects, and we were to describe them like gertrude stein might. i wound up looking at this bizarre baby-doll head thing cast out of kind of swirled black rubber? it was pretty horrifying. this is what i wrote.

out of sight, don't look, old and young, disintegrating. hollow and hollow and heavy staring. staring out staring down staring empty staring staring. closed. staring strong stars. under there is a swash and under there is a jab and under there is. and flesh wishes it were and isn't, glinting and matte and velvet. satin. eggshell. a swirl, a swash, a dent, a drip, a dent and you didn't, you didn't, did you. you didn't and she couldn't. disintegrating, can be seen through cannot do the seeing. can't do the seeing, the saying, the sighing the sewing the suing the selling.  a surface, a seam. a give, but no reverberate. no pulse, a morbid a mordred. impermanent but not breakable. sssssibillance. skin pilled, pooled. a foam, a foam a foam, hollow and wrapped heavy, dipped heavy. heavy and accusatory and glaring and staring and daring. not caring. swashes of flaw, not of fill but of flow and drop and bounce. and bounce and jar. and jar and fling. and fling and stain and stain and dab and satin, velvet, eggshell. matte. made unmade, raw. flat. unsmooth. round but split. round but empty. a wooden jab, a pop. a pock. apocalyptic. a shine. a dent. don't you? won't you? will you, still, still will you? still? a ruffle. a tug. this feels a little like a murder, and the glance, and the gash. and the rub smooth. and the wide open, the open wide. the tried. the cried. the fried.

sorry for the shameless writing plugs. but i am super exciting to be working with this poetry because i <3 tender buttons.