SOURCE: "Women Poets and the Emergence of Modernism," in The Columbia History of American Poetry, edited by Jay Parini, Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 233-59.

In the following excerpt, Dickie presents an overview of Stein's role in the early years of experimentation in Modernist poetry.

Early recognition of Stein's importance rested largely on her prose, which formed the bulk of her published work: Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1914), Geography and Plays (1922), The Making of Americans (1925). Although she was writing poetry during this period (and Tender Buttons is itself a prose poem), most of her poetry was not published until after her death, in Bee Time Vine and Other Pieces (1913-1927) (1953), Painted Lace and Other Pieces (1914-1937) (1955), and Stanzas in Meditation and Other Poems (1929-1933) (1956).

However, this distinction of genre is not entirely accurate, and even here Stein is more experimental than this commentary has allowed. Her work is not easily...