Tender Buttons [A Long Dress]

There is no entirely standard or clear-cut way of looking at the structure of Tender Buttons, which may be considered a short work of experimental prose, a long, serial poem, or a collection of related prose poems. Because of this, the titles of the sub-sections of Tender Buttons take on special importance. Are they titles of individual poems, or are they themselves part of a longer poem? Even if we treat “A Long Dress” as a singular and contained prose poem, it is important to recognize the unique importance of the title to the rest of the text. Appearing under the “Objects” heading (the first of Tender Button’s three sections: “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms”), “A Long Dress” does indeed appear to be an object. The object in question is already infused with domesticity, especially placed as it is alongside other poems entitled “A Plate,” “A Seltzer Bottle,” “A Red Hat,” and “A Blue Coat.” Additionally, any dress invariably invokes femininity. Both domesticity and femininity are important overarching themes of Tender Buttons, which contains references to both in its title. Buttons, certainly, are mundane and domestic, but much has been said about the sly reference to female sexuality and anatomy in the phrase “tender buttons.”

Although the “Long Dress” of the title does not appear explicitly in the poem, it haunts the opening lines as a potential subject. The poem’s first sentence either asks or states, “What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle” (Line 1). Particularly in concert with the last part of the sentence—“what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist” (Line 1)—the machinery evokes a sewing machine, with the “current” (Line 1) as either electricity that makes it run or a metaphoric current of the geometry of a dress, a “current that presents a long line” (Line 1). With these readings, the “crackle” (Line 1) refers to either the sparking of electricity, the humming of a sewing machine, or the energy that “crackle[s]” (Line 1) in the form of a dress.

However, as with most of Stein’s writing (and all of it in Tender Buttons), the syntax of the poem makes it impossible to determine any one meaning or read. Instead, Stein assembles a slew of impressions and their associated linguistic incarnations to allow for multiple potential readings. The words in Tender Buttons are intended not to evoke objects but to exist on their own as words evoked by the objects in question. In this way, the “long line,” the “current,” the “necessary waist,” and the “machinery” that “crackles” (Line 1) can be understood as phrases and words surrounding a person’s interaction with a dress in everyday life.

An alternative way to understand these sentences phrased as questions but punctuated as statements is that they are statements, with the question words treated as noun subjects. In other words, the word “what” is, itself, “the current that makes machinery” (Line 1). Following this type of reading, it is the word “what” that makes the word “it” “crackle [with energy, or perhaps with meaning]” (Line 1). Here the subject “what” can be the specific word itself, or a sort of stand-in for a hidden subject or absence—a “whatever.” Is there a question associated with a dress? Perhaps the dress asks a question of its wearer, a question of gender and the way a dress-wearer becomes caught up in a certain linguistic performance as a woman.

Individual phrases in the opening sentences are themselves laden with potential meanings. For instance, what does Stein mean by “a necessary waist” (Line 1)? Is this phrase a reference, simply, to the fact that a dress must “necessary[ily]” have a waist (Line 2)? Or instead, is a human waist “necessary” for a dress—does a dress require a person to wear it? These potential meanings, and the complicated ways they play off one another, are a key component of Stein’s writing technique in Tender Buttons. Following any one interpretative avenue reveals a host of potential meanings, though the more a reader forms a semblance of logical meaning out of the work, the further the interpretation must stretch from the text itself.

For example, if a reader follows the gender-based interpretation, it is possible to see the “long dress” as a symbol for generations of culturally constructed femininity—and the oppression with which it is plagued. The very “long”-ness of the dress could signify the long chain (or, rather, the “long line”) of cultural oppression (Line 1). The poem then asks its questions in protest and exasperation: “What is the current that makes [the] machinery” (Line 1) of the generations of oppression of women, of the “long line” (Line 1) of people pigeonholed into certain roles and traits by the “machinery” (Line 1) of cultural gender categories?

Following this gender-centric, sociological reading, the poem can only answer its question with another question: “What is the wind” (Line 3). It is as fruitful to try and grasp the machinery of cultural construction and oppression as it is to try and grasp the wind, the poem seems to claim. The repeated question following this first clause, “what is it” (Line 3), may be read as a sort of sigh, a shrug of weariness. That the questions end in periods also fits into this interpretive framework, transforming questions into longsuffering cries of protest imbued with resignation.

If, on the other hand, we return to the interpretation that emphasizes the word “what” (Line 3) as the explicit subject of the poem’s declarative sentences, this second paragraph composed of a single, short line takes on a new set of significances. In this read, “what” is many things: It is “the current” (Line 1), it “makes machinery” (Line 1), it “presents a long line” (Line 1), and now it “is the wind” (Line 3) and it “is it” (Line 3). Understood this way, the poem recalls Taoist writing, emphasizing the energy and importance of absence and non-being in much the same way as Lao Tzu. This “what” (Line 3)—this absence—could even be understood as a playful but metaphorical potent depiction of humanity. After all, dresses are characterized by the empty space in their center, and this space is there only to be filled by a human body. Of course, this play between emptiness, the body, femininity, and being filled begins to echo off the feminist reading discussed earlier.

Crucially, Stein’s text does not aim at a definitive “meaning” but instead creates a cloud of associations surrounding the subject of each part of Tender Buttons—in this case, around a “Long Dress.” This miasma of meaning is filled with interactions, contradictions, and sensory and ideological evocations. For Stein, these linguistic tangles always already surround everything—including the “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms” we encounter every day. One helpful way to approach her writing, then, is to see it as a kind of record or depiction of the associated linguistic impressions that are the bread and butter of human experience.

In the poem’s last paragraph, Stein replaces the dominant “what” (Lines 1, 2, 3) with its cousin, “Where” (Line 4). While “what” looks for a noun, “where” asks for a location, shifting the poem’s orientation from a search for some subject to a progression through space. “Where is the serene length” (Line 4) repeats the length from the title and the “long line” (Line 1) presented by “the current” (Line 1) in the first paragraph. Why has the length become “serene” (Line 4) in this final paragraph? Viewed through the two interpretive frameworks that have already been discussed, it could signify either the Zen “seren[ity]” (Line 4) of absence and movement, or point out the lack of “seren[ity]” (Line 4) in the long history of supposedly placid women. The word also contrasts with the “machinery,” “crackle,” and “current” (Line 1) that hum with distinctly non-serene energy in the poem’s first half. Understood as a contrast, and in concert with the shift from “what” to “where” (Line 4), this clause could suggest a search for an entirely distinct kind of length. First, the dress is constructed with a sewing “machine[ ]” (Line 1), then it blows in “the wind” (Line 3), finished and empty. Finally, the dress is filled with a body and made a “serene length” (Line 4).

However “serene” is interpreted, the poem seems to begin answering rather than asking questions following the comma at the end of this initiating clause of the final paragraph. Rather than the syntax of questioning, “it is there” (Line 4) is structured as a firmly declarative statement. Where, exactly, is this “there” that answers the question of “Where is” (Line 4)? Before the reader has time to consider this ambiguity, the clause addends itself: “and a dark place is not a dark place” (Line 4). This addition pulls the rug out from under any logical investigation on the part of the reader—it seems designed to contradict the basic premises of logic. Specifically, elementary logic considers the law of noncontradiction essential: that A cannot equal not-A. However, Stein has explicitly written the opposite, that something “is not” itself (Line 4). This disorienting addition to what at first seemed to be the first instance of the poem answering its constant questions precipitates the longest sentence in “A Long Dress.” The long string of colors and statements seems to defy logic at every turn: first, with noncontradiction. Next, basic color principles are defied: “only a white and red are black” (Line 4), after which the law of identity is broken, “pink is scarlet” (Line 4).

Viewed with a wide lens, this “long[est] line” (Line 1) of Stein’s poem works to destabilize any standard logical approach to interpretation. In a way, the line is instructive to Stein’s readers: Do not attempt to make sense of this using traditional metrics of sense, the poem seems to claim. However, as with any part of Stein, it accomplishes more than this single goal. Although the rainbow as a symbol of queerness was standardized after Stein’s time, the similarity of this rainbow of colors in the context of a discussion of gender is striking. The poem’s questions blossom into an illogical and intangible collection of colors that both are and aren’t themselves, which mix in unique ways and transform from themselves into other colors. In the context of a gender-centric interpretation of the poem, this concatenation of color demonstrates a radical and liberating response to the sociological “machinery” (Line 1) of gender, of the “Long Dress.” After the period-punctuated questions of resignation in the first half of the poem, it is no accident that the colors appear directly following the first appearance of a syntax of an answer: “it is there” (Line 4).

If the human, female body that fills the “serene length” (Line 4) of a dress is shadowed underneath the fabric, making it a “dark place” (Line 4), this does not mean that the person herself is a space of darkness. Instead, she is an assemblage of contradictions and colors, colors that she herself “only” is (Line 4). This describes a vibrant and unique human being, a person who by definition cannot be reduced to simply a “dark place” (Line 4) that defies any “machinery” (Line 1). While it is important to recognize that this one reading is not the only possible understanding of this Stein text, the pieces fit too well together for it to be simple coincidence. The color sentence concludes with the statement, “a bow is every color” (Line 4). The “bow” (Line 4) fits back into the poem’s starting object, the “Long Dress,” but evokes ornamentation and accessorizing rather than definition. While the “it” (Lines 5 and 6) of the two final sentences in the poem is unspecified, the concluding echoed phrase supports this new way of understanding clothing. Rather than defining the poem’s linguistic play, acting as a “necessary” object (Line 1), the “long line” (Line 1) of the dress now “distinguishes” (Lines 5 and 6). Not only that, but Stein emphasizes that this “line just distinguishes [emphasis added]” (Line 6). The poem has transformed the dress from an object that prompts structural questions of identity into a simple accent, something that cannot subsume the person who wears or encounters it.