"Guillaume Apollinaire," by Gertrude Stein is a very interesting piece
in my opinion. To some extent, I dislike the way that her ideas are so
vague in her free-verse that it is nearly impossible to decode a fluent
meaning, but in a sense, it is also what I like best about her work.
Free-verse is meant to express a feeling more than anything else and
Stein does this well. There is also something to be said for her
acknowledgement of the individual's thought. Stein uses the vague
language that she does so that every reader can translate their own
unique meaning, and judging by the vastly different ideas that different
students had for her various poems in class today, it is clear that she
succeeds in doing this.
With lines like, "Elbow elect, sour stout pore,
pore caesar," the meaning can be interpreted in a million different
ways, none of which are ultimately right and none of which are
ultimately wrong. The meaning is simply what it makes each individual
reader feel, and that is extremely powerful.
For these reasons, I am
very interested in Gertrude Stein.
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