Who is showing us this unordered spectacle?
They are recklessly making exchanges.

Not likely in the closet, she connects singing with a message.
He does not like to show himself singing in the closet there.
Hanging in it sooner, for no side is established there.

Suppose her cloak is spread.
A single cane is attractive.
When a white stamp stops being shown, it becomes increasingly fitting.
Housing and shows preserve their patients.
Pack some lead-colored glasses.

No stone loses the inclination to be shown.
Isn't it the same as any sign at a spectacle?
No spectacle makes a season.
She strokes wood on the spot as a charm.
Between stomachs the lightening lace is reckless and did less.
No dog needs to be wearing lace at the wrist in the summer.
Doesn't the nearest spot show?

Rounds of mutton are standard on steamers.
They do not shine as specialties.
The strange thick spaces outside the ham don't make sound like much like kindness.
Those older goats should loosen nothing there the second week.
Like not raising blood sooner, gathering garlands increases strings.
The sooner they're tender, the sooner the opposition uses lilacs.
Symbolic stockings are not sweet.
There it's likely the shows are showing stomachers and pocketfuls of coconut.
They cloak a likely roast.
This white outline is not a likely protection because that working knife is standing.
Does this house spread open to show evenly separated handkerchiefs?

Shadows of loose change are paved with showy potatoes.
It's excellent back there.
The whole is not seen.
No reasonable cooking leaves a roast in butter.
The little cross estranged them.
They stick slender spoons in the cool trees.
Hop to it!
Oh see how they sat at the show and remain!
They remained and sat, but speaking was extra.
Oh see the show they showed!
Any stone in a line may be a little trouble with much more darkening than kneeling.
In this corner any cooking left would suggest another question and it happened that nothing smaller in it was so open.
Every clear student made a manikin and showed it, but sunshine never shows the trouble with it.

The tidiness of the package was much of it, not all, and no one sensible lives there with a stove.
Lessening a lengthening nose shows there's nothing to this.
This shows there's nothing that can lessen her lengthening nose.
He smiled at that coat in the store—more so because it was up there.
All the same, checking smiling was satisfactory, what with the sweetness of that whole thing.
Its ending up violet at that time shows that it lacks cooking.
Not enough pease in the summer season makes white buttons in moonlight a noisy choice.
Isn't it strange that a single color is pointing to the spreading of spitting there?
Sugar on a black string doesn't make for sewing but an outward show of it.
This time it is necessary to be sick this time and shown to be losing no glass.
The lead color of the stone incline shows the house was patiently preserved.
At the same time isn't the sign for the spectacle a spectacular treat?
The stroke season makes no spot in the wood charming.
Between their stomachs the lightening lace was reckless and did less.
Does the dog who spotted the lace worn at her wrist need to be shown the nearest mutton?
Around the steamers standards do not shine as specialties.
The strange thick spaces between the ham and the outside of the whole make all of that sound.
Anyway, the older little goats should have a second week of kindness.

The looseness there is nothing.
If you don't like raising blood, increase the string.
Gather ye garlands sooner.
The sooner they are tender the sooner the opposition uses lilacs.
This shows that stockings aren't sweet symbols there.
Is a pocketful of coconut stomachers likely to cloak a roast?
This white outline is not likely to be a protection.
A worker with a knife is standing there.
Does this spread show the house is even open?
Shadows paved with potatoes are seen to separate handkerchiefs and show loose change.
There's little excellence back there—not another whole roast.
Cooking leaves in a little butter estranges no one reasonable.
Is it cool to stick a cross in a tree to see the slender spoons hop!
Oh see the show!
What they showed was extra.
Are they remaining to speak?
An extra stone sat.
There was a lot of darkening and kneeling and a not little trouble .
Would another question about cooking help suggest what happened in this corner?

Eight strophes whose words were initially drawn from the complete text of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons. I sent the entire text through DIASTEX5, Charles O. Hartman's 1994 update of DIASTEXT (1989}, his automation of one of my deterministic diastic reading-through text-selection procedures developed in 1963. I used as seed text the sentence-paragraph "A show at tick and loosen loosen it so to speak sat." This comes near the end of "FOOD," the second part of Tender Buttons. I selected the seed paragraph by random-digit chance operations using .the RAND Corporation's table A Million Random Digits with 100,,000 Normal Deviates. (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1955).

My source and seed texts came from the first edition of Tender Buttons, issued by Donald Evans's publishing house Claire Marie (New York, 1914), as posted online in The Bartleby Archive (1995) and The New Bartleby Library (1999), both edited by Steven van Leeuwen, with editorial contributions by Gordon Dahlquist. However, I corrected minor typos and incorporated in my file of Tender Buttons fourteen corrections written in ink in Stein's hand, which Ulla E. Dydo found in Donald Sutherland's copy of the first edition, now owned by the Special Collections of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

I "mined" the output of DIASTEX5 for words which I included in 117 verse-line sentences that I edited by making changes and/or additions of suffixes, pronouns, structure words, forms of "to be," etc., by alterations of word order, and by deletions. Often, but not always, I placed lexical words' near others that were near words in the raw output that included their root morpheme.

While composing the 117 verse-line sentences, I grouped them into eight strophes that successively comprise numbers of sentences corresponding to the prime-number sequence 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19.

                                                        [Precedent for the endnote: La Vita Nuova.]

Jackson Mac Low
New York: 5 October 1999–5 January 2000

Pub. May 2001

DRC