Jordan Wason Professor Rehill Response to Food by Gertrude Stein

September 18th, 2012 Performance Poetry

Stein's Food is structured into paragraphs that feel cohesive, but remain mysterious in meaning. Every sentence could be interpreted in an exponentially increasing number of ways. This is because the words are organized so that, depending on where you place the emphasis, the meaning of the sentence changes. There are no question marks so that if you read a sentence like a question you realize your mistake and must interpret its meaning differently, such as the statement What is a loving tongue and pepper and more fish than there is when tears many tears are necessary. The period at the end seems to make what a noun taking on these properties. Much of this work seems to revolve around word and sentence structure, which creates the flow and rhythm. The repetition of the same word or short phrase directly after its first use, and within the same sentence, is used often for emphasis and to move the piece forward. The subject matter seems to use food and the qualities of food as descriptions or symbols for other things and ideas. From the excerpt it seems like a shopping list for each mean of the day. Our section focuses on breakfast and breaks this down into sugar, cranberries, milk, milk, and eggs. Dividing up the list is what feels like a stream of conscious monologue on what the different characteristics of this list made the narrator's mind wander to. This would explain the extreme abstract subject matter and the questions that answer themselves. If the reading of this list was taking place in a persons mind they would think of the item, and then the mind could jump to various associations that would link the other thoughts in their mind to that item.