SOURCE: "Gertrude Stein and Tender Buttons" in The Patient Particulars: American Modernism and the Technique of Originality, Bucknell University Press, 1995, pp. 80-116.

In the following excerpt, Knight applies theories of artistic perception to Stein's poetic style in Tender Buttons, emphasizing Stein's desire to create subjective impressions of the world rather than to produce concrete descriptions as in more traditional poetry.

Like [Claude] Monet, [Stein] sets out to do the impossible: to see the things of this world with such concentration, such intensity, that she would block out everything that is not the object of attention, all backdrop, all relations, everything that is not included in the thing-itself. Her titles—"A Shawl," "A Table," "A Book,"—are often the only clues regarding the representational nature of her pieces. Still they, along with everything else we know about Stein's artistic intentions, are clues enough to warrant our relating the Stein...