The first of Gertrude Stein's publications, this accessible 1909 volume was an experiemntal work for its time and established the author's reputation as a master of language and a voice for women. In three separate tales, Stein invests the lives of three working class women with extraordinary insights into race, sex, gender, and other feminist issues.

Three Lives Three short stories comprise Gertrude Stein’s first significant work, each a psychological portrait of a different woman. “The Good Anna” is a kindly but domineering German servant. “The Gentle Lena” apathetically endures her miserable life until she dies in childbirth. “Melanctha” is a young Black woman learning about sexuality and love. Different as they may be, all three women are bound by poverty—and all three face the restrictions of class, race, and sex with resignation. Tender Buttons Stein spoke of maintaining a “continuous present,” comprised of “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory. Nowhere is this more clear than in her prose poems Tender Buttons. Their repetitive sentences, juxtaposition of sounds, and simple language connote this continuous presence. To live in this state is “to begin again and again,” to “use everything.” Each of the three sections, “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms,” employs both this repetition and disjointed words to build images. Prose poetry at its most abstract expression, Tender Buttons “is to writing…what cubism is to art.” (W.G. Rogers)

Tender Buttons is a 1914 book by American writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms". While the short book consists of multiple poems covering the everyday mundane, Stein's experimental use of language renders the poems unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar.Stein began composition of the book in 1912 with multiple short prose poems in an effort to "create a word relationship between the word and the things seen" using a "realist" perspective. She then published it in three sections as her second book in 1914

Three early experimental pieces involving such stylistic devices as repeated variations on a limited set of sentences and phrases, and "word portraits." Also includes "A Long Gay Book" and "Many, Many Women."

Reading Gertrude Stein traces the evolution of the mind and art of Gertrude Stein from Three Lives through The Making of Americans to Tender Buttons. In a series of close readings, Lisa Ruddick shows how Stein, whom she regards as the first truly modern writer in English, absorbed the influence of several of the major thinkers of her day (particularly William James and Freud), and then developed unique perspectives of her own original language and culture.

"This collection, a retrospective exhibit of the work of a woman who created a unique place for herself in the world of letters, contains a sample of practically every period and every manner in Gertrude Stein's career. It includes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its entirety; selected passages from The Making of Americans; "Melanctha"from Three Lives; portraits of the painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso; Tender Buttons; the opera Four Saints in Three Acts; and poem, plays, lectures, articles, sketches, and a generous portion of her famous book on the Occupation of France, Wars I Have Seen.

Ahead of Her Time, And Ours As Well... Tender Buttons, Stein's first published work of poetry, debuted in 1914 as a volume of powerful avant-garde expression. This meditation on ordinary living is presented in three compelling sections-"Objects," "Food," and "Rooms"-through which Stein delights in experiments with language. Emphasizing rhythm and sonority over traditional grammar, Stein's wordplay has garnered praise from readers and critics alike. In "A Piece of Coffee," for example, Stein plays with conventional language and cubist imagery to produce a stunningly original literary effect: ""A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign of more is not mentioned. A piece of coffee is not a detainer. The resemblance to yellow is dirtier and distincter. The clean mixture is whiter and not coal color, never more coal color than altogether."" Get Your Copy Now.

Sherwood Anderson in his public introduction to Stein's 1922 publication of Geography and Plays wrote: "For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entirely new recasting of life, in the city of words. Here is one artist who has been able to accept ridicule, who has even forgone the privilege of writing the great American novel, uplifting our English speaking stage, and wearing the bays of the great poets to go live among the little housekeeping words, the swaggering bullying street-corner words, the honest working, money saving words and all the other forgotten and neglected citizens of the sacred and half forgotten city." Check out this seven short stories by this author carefully selected by critic August Nemo: - Ada. - Miss furr and Miss Skeen. - France. - Americans. - Italians. - A Sweet Tail. - In the Grass.

Fragmentary, unabashed, erotic―“Lifting Belly” is a singular lesbian love poem from modernist Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) which lays bare desire and easy intimacy—now in a beautifully packaged edition. What is it when it’s upset. It isn’t in the room. Moonlight and darkness. Sleep and not sleep. We sleep every night. What was it. I said lifting belly. You didn’t say it. I said I mean lifting belly. Don’t misunderstand me. Do you. Do you lift everybody in that way. No. You are to say No. Lifting belly. How are you. Lifting belly how are you lifting belly. We like a fire and we don’t mind if it smokes. Do you. ―From “Lifting Belly” Each palm–size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most–beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting–edge, wide–ranging, and independent.