About Karren LaLonde Alenier
Karren LaLonde Alenier is author of eight poetry collections—most recently how we hold on from Broadstone Books, 2021. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her jazz opera with composer Bill Banfield, premiered in New York by Encompass New Opera Theatre in 2005.
“Don’t go into the Steinian woods alone,” says Karren Alenier. Thus, she enlisted 36 other poets to respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons Objects, the first volume of a three-book set. From the Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons Volume I is a far-flung community of poets, ranging in experience and in age from 19 to 90, who respond with experiments, interpretations, and imaginative echoes of Stein’s willful and whimsical disruptions. Space is provided where the reader may join the conversation with their own responses, making this volume a springboard to new work. Alenier, whose New York Times reviewed opera Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On examined Stein’s critics, leads the response with some of her own Stein-influenced poems. From the Belly offers a way to relax and enjoy Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein’s most mysterious work.
Praise for From the Belly
This colle
ction of responses to Gertrude Stein is astonishing, yes—but it is also useful. Karren Alenier, one of our most intrepid and experienced Steinists, organizes for us a juxtaposition of an original Tender Button poem and a contemporary poetic reply…—Al Filreis
Every turn of the page in the anthology From the Belly is a surprise and a revelation. What I initially thought of as a daunting undertaking—it’s Gertrude Stein, for goodness’ sake!—proved itself to be an exercise in imaginative craft…—Joseph O. Legaspi
This cleverly conceived collection of poems written in response to Tender Buttons achieves what Gertrude Stein herself was always striving for: moments of dialogue on the page…—Barbara Will
Praise for From the Belly: FOOD
What a great idea! Amazing how suggestive Stein’s Tender Buttons are! It is regularly claimed that these poems are charming “nonsense” and don’t mean anything. Alenier and her contributors show they certainly do “mean” in wonderful ways. —Marjorie Perloff
… We read Stein’s words—perplexing, astonishing, infuriating—alongside the poets’ responses—challenging, surprising, illuminating. These 38 contemporary writers offer us new ways to understand Stein’s work, but Stein’s work also offers us fresh ways to think about these new poems. …—Deborah M. Mix
…The reader cannot go wrong when they walk into this kitchen. The recipes handed to them are as flexible and varied as the poems written here in response. So go ahead, throw in your particular spices and feast to your heart’s and mind’s content. ….—Indran Amirthanayagam
…From the Belly takes its inspiration from seminal poet Gertrude Stein who turns our attention to language, surprising associations, food, and yes, biting commentary about all that makes us human. I suspect we will be reading these response poems for a long while, revisiting Stein, and stitching and unstitching our trousers from this bountiful literary feast. —Abdul Ali
Praise for From the Belly: Rooms
What a tour de force. The legacy of Stein still encourages new writing…—David Keplinger
After objects and food come rooms. What is this love affair we have with Stein and things? Is it because she holds our heads against language? Here is a book of writers fingering words like tender buttons.—E. Ethelbert Miller
How do you enter Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons Rooms when “there is no use in a center” and “a wide action is not a width”? Miss Stein tells you, Dear Reader, “the tune which is there has a little piece to play.” One and all must find the tune, that little piece to play—through the 85 stanzas that stream without break until at last “there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus and also a fountain.”
With her fragmentations, her stops and starts, and her twisting grammatical structures, Gertrude Stein offers the reader opportunities to consider how meaning is made. Her words challenge and intrigue, inviting us to reconsider our preconceptions about what is normal and about how we continually remake “meaning” in our relationships—with oneself, other people, the planet, the universe.
Now it is your turn to listen to the music Stein makes, to find that little piece to play. Your conversation with Miss Stein awaits.
This provocative and surprising final volume of Karren Alenier’s three-part series of contemporary American poets responding to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons offers readers a deep immersion into the classic celebration of Modernism. …—Jan Freeman