Tender Buttons

by Gertrude Stein

Tender Buttons is one of Stein's best known poems, employing the "stream of consciousness" method similar to works by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Stein published it in three distinct parts: objects, food, rooms, viewed as an expression of cubism.
[Painting at right by Juan Gris, 1915; below by Robert Delaunay, 1910]
[We present this work as a book, rather than as a poem, so the reader may consider each of its parts individually.]