Out
Side
Is
Only
There
If
Something
Is

Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within
Within the walls,                                                                          Within
Within the mind, is                                                         Withheld       Within
Within   -  holds power.                                                                   Within
Within,            of types:                                                               Within
Within              that fit in                                      Immured               Within
Within            what she sings of                                                        Within
Within                           inside                                                    Within
Within                days where out it goes;               Towards self                   Within
Within                             and back again.                                         Within
Within                         Bellies turned backwards,                                   Within
Within                                 the embalmed remnants                               Within
Within                                                 forgotten.                          Within
Within                                Held                  Our minds                      Within
Within                                                            change                   Within
Within                                                                 minds               Within
Within                     Inside                                         only.            Within
Withinn                                                                    flowers         Within
Within                                                                          grow       Within
Within         Near                                                             inside     Within
Within                                                                          and back   Within
Within                                                                              again. Within
Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within Within

Inside
Is
Only
There
If
Something
Is

Gertrude Stein revolutionized traditional ideas of prose and poem at the beginning of the twentieth century with her exploration of repetition, shape, and psychological elements within her writing.
Born in California and educated at Radcliffe College in New England, she moved to Paris in 1903 where she she began her her influential career. Stein contributed to the modernist movement not only through her writing but also as a collector of modernist art. Through the relationships she built with prominent artists, her writing became an influence in the visual zeitgeist of early twentieth-century art. Her famous phrase “A Rose is a Rose” which Stein used and repeated throughout various works plays with the mind both in its circularity of meaning, but with its visual element as well where the phrase can be arranged in a circle and not only keep its structure but enhance its meaning further through circular representation. This representation goes further than even its physical practicality in description as it serves to represent the singularity of objects in relation to themselves. A rose is identical only to a rose as a person is only identical to themselves.
This avant-garde approach to writing influenced artists from Picasso to Duchamp, who is believed to have created his moniker Rrose Sélavy in conversion with Stiens “A rose is a rose”. This poem that I have written is also in conversation with Stein’s approach. The inspiration for this piece was to try to create a poem that built meaning not only through essential/ definitional meaning, like in “A Rose”, but also through physical relation to the page and space around the word such as in the circular representations of “A Rose’ as well with the unique syntax and formatting in Tender Buttons. Another element that I attempt to channel through this piece is the stream of consciousness that Stein employs in works such as Tender Buttons, where connections between words and ideas within the work connect to each other through word association and essential meaning as well as the personal psychological processes and individual meaning embedded in the symbology of language through the author’s personal experience.