Tender Buttons [A Long Dress]

“A Long Dress” is a small part of Gertrude Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons, written in 1912 and published in 1914. The poem is one of many small sub-sections under the heading “Objects,” the first of three sections in the text, followed by “Food” and “Rooms.” Stein is remembered both for her important impact on the art world, as a curator and cultural figure, and for her literary career characterized by her singular experimental mode. Born an American but adopted as a Parisian, Stein writes in the artistic milieu of Modernism generally and Cubism specifically. While Stein wrote Tender Buttons somewhat early in her literary career, it is generally considered the crowning achievement of her poetry, if not her prose. “A Long Dress” is typical of the “Object” section of Tender Buttons, written in prose form and playing with syntax, as well as refusing to land on any single, definite meaning.

Please note that the line numbers included in this guide refer to each sentence in the poem that ends with a period.

Poet Biography

Stein was born in 1874 to upper-middle-class Jewish parents in what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The youngest of five siblings, Stein grew up in a household that spoke German as well as English. Stein was also exposed early in life to French, during a year-long period during which her family moved to Vienna and then Paris. By the time she was 17, both of her parents had died, and Stein had lived in Oakland, San Francisco, and finally Baltimore. Stein received a Harvard education, where she was a student of renowned psychologist and philosopher William James and graduated magna cum laude. Before dedicating herself to writing and art, Stein attended medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. However, faced with both discrimination as a woman studying medicine and her lack of interest, Stein left her studies, finally ending up in Paris in 1903.

As a Parisian, Stein made her reputation in acquiring a large and important art collection and hosting cultural events frequented by many of the early-20th-century’s greatest artists: Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse, and many others. Despite being a lesbian, Jewish expatriate at a time when each of these identities alone were cause for social oppression, Stein left an indelible mark on the art and culture of her century and beyond. Aside from her importance as a cultural figure, Stein wrote both prose and poetry in an unmatched experimental mode that continues to puzzle critics and readers even as its influence remains foundational for English-language literature. Stein died in a hospital near Paris in the company of her partner, Alice Toklas, at the age of 72 in 1946. Among her most important works is the 900-page avant-garde novel The Making of Americans (1925), her one popular success and most accessible memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), and the peerless masterpiece of Modernist experimental poetry, Tender Buttons (1914).

Poem Text

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

Stein, Gertrude. “A Long Dress.” 1914. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

“A Long Dress” appears in the middle of the first section of Stein’s long poem Tender Buttons, which is split into three sections: “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms.” These (except for the final section) are further split into many, small, individually-titled prose poems. “A Long Dress” is made up of three short prose paragraphs that follow the thematic interests and stylistic choices that characterize the text as a whole.

“A Long Dress” opens with what initially appears a question, “What is the […]” (Line 1), only for the sentence to conclude with a period rather than a question mark. The initiating phrase asks (or, perhaps, states) what “is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle” (Line 1). The antecedent for “it” is somewhat ambiguous, possibly referring to the “machinery” (Line 1) of the previous phrase, or potentially the “Long Dress” of the title. The first sentence concludes by restating the “what is the current” (Line 1) of its opening but substitutes “that presents a long line and a necessary waist” (Line 1) for the “machinery” (Line 1) of its counterpart. The repeated phrase is emphasized again in the conclusion of the paragraph, with the final sentence reading simply, “What is this current” (Line 2).

Instead of answering the questions posed in the first paragraph, the second asks another question: “What is the wind, what is it” (Line 3). Once again, the status of this phrase as a question is debatable due to the concluding period. It is also possible to read “What” (Line 3) as a noun and subject of its sentences rather than a question. After this short sentence about “the wind” (Line 3), Stein inserts the second paragraph break in the prose poem.

The final paragraph begins not with “what” but with “where” (Line 4). “Where is the serene length” (Line 4) harkens back to both the titular “long dress” and to the “long line” (Line 1) of the beginning of the poem. After this opening phrase, the final paragraph departs from the loose syntactical pattern Stein established in the first two paragraphs. Following a comma, the poem seems at first to answer its question with “it is there” (Line 4). However, rather than clarify where exactly “there” is, Stein addends an “and” (Line 4) followed by a long string of seemingly nonsensical statements about various colors. The poem states, “a dark place is not a dark place” (Line 4), followed quickly by “only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet” (Line 4). These statements are all structured as if to present logical claims, but the claims seem to lack any substantive referent.

The poem concludes this long departure from form with the phrase, “a bow is every color” (Line 4). While there are many ways to understand this clause, it is notable that it ties the sentence back into the poem’s thematic focus on clothing. Finally, the paragraph concludes with two short sentences that mirror the opening paragraph’s: “A line distinguishes it” (Line 5), and “A line just distinguishes it” (Line 6). The “line” in question echoes the “long line” (Line 1) from earlier, while the emphasis on the “it” (Line 6) with its ambiguous antecedent returns the reader to the mysterious interests that initiated “A Long Dress.”