For the full text of the article, click here. Here is an abstract:
ABSTRACT: This article takes Stein as one (if not the
only) source for feminist avant-garde poetry--writing that
uses experimental language to distinctly feminist ends. A
number of recent feminist poets owe a debt to _Tender
Buttons_, and Stein's work remains a subject of homage.
But, changes working their way through feminist thought
appear in some feminist avant-garde writing that doesn't
simply acknowledge Stein's language experiments but
contests them as well. I examine the influence of, and
divergence from, Steinian poetics in Harryette Mullen and
Stein's "modern" vision by merging "public" speech and
"private" experience--the language of the public spheres of
the street and the marketplace with the experiences of
intimacy and the erotic. Mullen and Scalapino blur the
border between public and private discourse that Stein
relied upon in order to reveal (and, paradoxically, *not*
reveal) her lesbian sexuality in a revolution of ordinary
domestic language. In response in part to Stein, each poet
illuminates language as a locus of the political and the
erotic, altering both eroticized and "public" language as
signs of a culture in need of a fundamental awareness about
the relationships between our most private and public acts.
--EF
Document URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-on-stein.html
Last modified: Thursday, 24-Jun-2010 13:26:48 EDT