AWP13 WEEK: Gertrude Stein: A Sound

Perhaps my impatience with neo-modernists--or perhaps since "neo" implies new what I should say is sto-modernists or sto-avant-garde (that's a nice murdering of language there)--is that the first poetry I read was the best of what the avant-garde had to give us (except perhaps some nice erasure/found poetry--but that's more of an exercise than a craft--but I digress. . . perfume and whatnot) and so when I read those fancy new  mid-20th century trailblazers I was just bored.

At any rate, here is the original oddball herself, from page 458 of my baptismal book. I like its sound and its wordplay. I love the final phrase. Word-jazz artists should ask themselves: "am I adding anything to the language not done better here in two lines?"

A Sound

Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and
chews all bolts and reckless rats, this is this.