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PARTISAN REVIEW
O 'H ara, Kenneth Koch , tha t particul ar trio, or even the San Fran–
cisco group , a lthough there were other influences out there- all
refl ected Stein 's literary methods. With Ashbery I am panicul arl y
aware of wha t you might call the la te manner of Gertrude; it appears
in a long poem of hers ca ll ed
S tanzas in Meditation ,
which again–
the sound of them , the fee l o f them-are modeled on Shakespeare's
sonnets. But you can 't put your fin ger on the meaning very eas il y
and I find John Ashbery very closely resembles Gertrude in his
manner.
Tri lling:
Do you think he wo uld acknowl edge tha t ?
Thomson :
He knows it, I think , but I wouldn 't ask him
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admit it.
T ri lling:
If
I think back
to
roughl y her age group among influential
American poets, o f course the first name tha t comes
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my mind is
William Carlos Williams. T he next genera tion a ll sa id they go t their
American speech from him . T hey don 't menti on Stein .
Thomson :
They go t from him the courage to use the kind of speech
they kn ew . He didn 't g ive them a vocabul ar y.
T ri lling:
They go t their voca bul ary out o f something way in back of
him in the American pas t.
Thomson:
Well , the courage to use your own grass roo ts is the big
American acquis ition , if you can make it.
T ri lling:
One o f the things tha t reall y interes ts me is th a t here in Stein
we have a key fi gure in the American tradition who's never been
g iven h er due in the advanced li terary world . To my know ledge there
has never been a serious essay about Gertrude Stein in any of the
literary journals. Am I mistaken about tha t·?
Thomson :
There are a coupl e of quite serious books. T here's one by
Don ald Sutherland and one by a man named Richard Bridgman,
from Ca lifornia.
T ri lling:
Oh, o f cou rse scho lars have worked on her, and I'm sure her
papers a re very va lu able to scho lars, but that's no t wha t I'm talking
about.
Thomson:
But you see, Genrude is much harder
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explica te than her
rival Mr. J oyce. As Picasso sa id o f Joyce, he's an obscure writer that
everybody will end by unders tanding. Well, as he wrote tha t, a man
named Sherman or something was writing a who le concordance of
Ulysses,
so
Ulysses
was expl ained, and
Finnegan 's Wak e
was about
to come out and it
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is reason abl y clear , if you do your homework,
whereas there are man y p assages in Gertrude Stein tha t res ist
explica tion . And don 't forget tha t the idea l of the obscure ani sts–
Picasso himself-was
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conceal the message. T he same with Mal–
larme in French poetry. T he ideal of obscu r ity is to produce some-
