Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (b. 1971)
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Gertrude Stein’s Apraxia/Aphasia
Written by Desmond Kon
Dated 30 May 2020
“Gertrude Stein’s Apraxia/Aphasia” is a prose rewriting of “Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures”, a poem comprising eight cinquains:
Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures
Just now, I unwrapped her box of letters. Gertrude was an iconoclast
to her gravitas. What she did not know she let travel, recurrence
of rhymes like falling leaves buffeting, autumn breeze from East Side.
Gertrude did not know home tonight or home in the summer.
By the Hudson. Did not know pudding from sauce from Helfgott’s letters.Its mention of parlor poetry as dried hydrangea as pastoral,
as another Gothic point of view. As the bird feeder broke into two,
as freer roads after the scuttling, as prying apart the living architectonics.
Like her piano rolled down the stairs. Of play and vinaigrette
and too much cayenne. That the Tribune was the Tribune after all.But also a need and problem within the chronic hours.
Gertrude did not know the object beyond the object.
Beyond the waterfowl, a duck of oval, of beak and weathervane wing,
of zipper heart, and an accordion tongue. Gertrude did not know
where to put the centre of things. Gertrude did not soak Henry’s cloak.Nor Mildred’s, its hem another herringbone stitch another section
not whole enough or wholehearted or wholemeal enough.
The whole world was no longer a lazy afternoon or abiding love,
an old Gertrude looking at herself in the mirror of the ponding water.
Her head taking the shape of the barn, its shadow a black soot.In midday sun, quiet afternoon cradling itself into the moonless night.
Gertrude was earnest in losing things—the beat-up rosebush
one more variation, foot divisions misaligned, word endings falling
over each other, frothy tumble. Gertrude’s diaeresis, Alice in a deep sleep,
the lean and fallow years from that trembling point onwards.Gertrude’s dactylic dimeter drumming itself into the hexameter,
a twist as with the helix, as with rollercoaster feelings
when affectations run wild, when The Salon levitated
into The Cloud of Unknowing, its noetic white as wispy and dissolving.
Then a removal so she would always ask more questions.As supple as her very last. Gertrude’s Sunday clatter in another suite
to rile Chaucer, even in death, even in love from a distance.
Even in wise restraint and a portrait left in the dark, its phonic echoes
a new refrain of face and facet. And fractured verseforms.
Gertrude’s sudden awakening to sovereignty’s shining eye.Not decadence but wonderment. Not meaninglessness but a prayer,
a detachment and reasoned feeling. A small run of sounds and pictures.
Of a sapling writing out its unknown destination, its basis
and other evidence scaffolding, relaxed into a vine far down the road.
In the vineyard, a redder rose held out in the palm of her hand.
The original poem was awarded the Stepping Stones Nigeria Poetry Prize. Aphasia, derived from Greek to mean “speechlessness”, refers to a collection of language disorders, ranging from occasional difficulty with word choice to the inability to speak, read, or write. The condition, however, does not affect intelligence.
The second version—or iteration, as I like to think of things that have the remotest mimetic or mirroring effect—was reworked for the hybrid collection, FOODPORN cum Maundy Thursday. In fact, I made all the revisions directly on the designed pages, instead of my usual practice of producing as polished a book manuscript as possible in the Word document, before the text proceeds to the design stage. The collection comprised such assorted texts, spanning form and genre, and I decided this poem would sit more comfortably, and elegantly, in the book as a prose poem. One could also call it a lyric essay. That’s something I like to investigate and experiment with, the fine line—bleary and indistinct, if a line exists at all—between prose poetry, flash fiction and lyric essays.
Gertrude Stein’s Apraxia/Aphasia
Gertrude was an iconoclast to her gravitas, as aniconic. What she did not know she let travel, recurrence of rhymes like falling leaves, buffeting, autumn breeze from East Side.
Gertrude did not know home tonight or home in the summer. By the Hudson. Did not know pudding from sauce from Helfgott’s letters in the catalogue, its mention of parlour poetry as dried hydrangea as pastoral as another Gothic point of view. As the bird feeder broke into two, as freer roads after the scuttling, as prying apart the living architectonics like her piano rolled down the stairs, of play and vinaigrette and too much cayenne.
That the tribune was the tribune after all but also a need and problem within the chronic hours, no less her spice gone rancid over the celery sticks, beef jerky, mutton curry, devilled eggs with tomato-pear compote.
Gertrude did not know the object beyond the object. Beyond the waterfowl, a duck of oval, of beak and weathervane wing, of zipper heart, and an accordion tongue. Gertrude did not know where to put the centre of things.
Gertrude did not soak Henry’s cloak nor Mildred’s, its hem another herringbone stitch another section not whole enough or wholehearted or wholemeal enough. The whole world was no longer a lazy afternoon or abiding love, a Gertrude looking at herself in the mirror of the ponding water, her head taking the shape of the barn, its shadow a black soot in midday sun, a quiet afternoon that cradled itself into the moonless night.
Gertrude was earnest in losing things, the beat-up rosebush one more variation, the foot divisions misaligned, the word endings falling over each other, frothy tumble.
Gertrude’s diaeresis, the way Alice fell into a deep sleep, the lean and fallow years from that trembling point onwards.
Gertrude’s dactylic dimeter drumming itself into the hexameter, a twist as with the helix, as with rollercoaster feelings when affectations run wild, when The Salon levitated into The Cloud of Unknowing, its noetic white as wispy and dissolving.
Gertrude’s trochaic tetrameter buried in long lines, their sublime a bigger and deeper ravine, full but void, Trakl’s grasp on reality, Corbiere’s stubborn yellowing of good things, Celan’s light touch. On her old skin so she knew he cared, then a removal so she would always ask more questions, as supple as her very last.
Gertrude’s Sunday clatter in another suite to rile Chaucer, even in death, even in love from a distance, even in wise restraint and a portrait left in the dark, its phonic echoes a new refrain, of face and facet. And fractured verseforms.
Gertrude did not know sovereignty’s shining eye, sudden awakening to the sense. Not decadence but wonderment. Not meaninglessness but a prayer, a detachment and reasoned feeling. A small run of sounds, and their postcard pictures. Of a sapling writing out its unknown destination, its basis and other evidence scaffolding, relaxed into a vine, far down the road. In the vineyard, a redder rose held out in the palm of her hand.
Apart from the changes in poem title and shape, I just noticed I did produce subtle shifts in clausal structures, even altering the sentiment at a crucial point in the poem. I like this freedom of “rethinking things” that comes with revision and iteration. It seems rather faithful to how we evolve as human beings—in thought, action, identity, ideology, belief, value, among other things. I also noticed that I did write up new phrases that I managed to weave into the text quite seamlessly. One of these inclusions—or intrusions, if one wants to be a tad more aggressive in understanding textual fissuring and disruption—is this line: “no less her spice gone rancid over the celery sticks, beef jerky, mutton curry, devilled eggs with tomato-pear compote”. Another substantial inclusion would be: “Gertrude’s trochaic tetrameter buried in long lines, their sublime a bigger and deeper ravine, full but void, Trakl’s grasp on reality, Corbiere’s stubborn yellowing of good things, Celan’s light touch. On her old skin so she knew he cared…”
I saw “Apraxia/Aphasia” as a companion piece to another prose poem within the collection. That poem, titled “Gertrude Stein’s Agnosia”, first appeared in the UK-based journal Fuselit. The theme for that issue was “Contraption”. Agnosia refers to the loss of ability to process sensory information, and primarily affects a single modality, for instance, sight or smell.
Here, I’d like to take a leaf from Sylvia Plath, something she shared in her 1962 interview with Peter Orr: “My poems come immediately out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have... I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn’t be a kind of shut-box and mirror-looking, narcissistic experience. I believe it should be relevant, and relevant to the larger things…” In “Apraxia/Aphasia”, I was aware of how much I was attending to language and food as sensible constructs that were at once sensual and sensuous. I also like what Plath had to say about her engagement with history as a poet. At the point of the interview, she was particularly interested in Napolean. I guess Stein has always intrigued me as a poet ahead of her time, remarkable in the way she understood the avant garde in relation to language.
Plath also had this to say about history: “I’m not a historian, but I find myself being more and more fascinated by history… as I age, I am becoming more and more historical. I certainly wasn’t at all in my early twenties.” Both of my Stein poems encounter history in their own unique ways, I guess. They are loose ekphrastic creations of Stein’s 1914 Tender Buttons, a major influence in contemporary poetics. In “Agnosia”, there’s the mention of The Little Shop of Antiquities, which remains an allusion to Tender Buttons, with its three distinct sections of “Food”, “Objects” and “Rooms”. Like Plath, I do feel history has grown on me, with age. The whole phenomenon of history—as narrative, above all—seems to gain importance when one starts gathering one’s own personal story, when one understands the importance such history has on one’s own subjecthood and bearings.
