Loving Gertrude Stein

Stephanie McKenzie is a visiting assistant professor of English at Sir
Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She is
the editor and co-publisher of However Blow the Winds: An Anthology of
Poetry and Song from Newfoundland & Labrado

Loving Gertrude Stein a long poem, loosely broken into a prelude and
four subsequent cryptic sections: “(First(story first,” “two parts
/ (in/one / counting paris paris,” “parts three me,” and “fourth
part she.” The poem grows out of the same poetic tradition that
informs the poetry of Gerry Shikatani, Di Brandt, and the earlier verse
of Erin Mouré. Schnitzer’s engagement with and tribute to the life of
Stein is écriture feminine.

Informed as it is by the traditions of concrete and found poetry, as
well as a conscious rejection of patriarchal language and inheritance,
Loving Gertrude Stein is a visual poem with a non-sequential, linear
narrative. There are many moments of beauty, such as in this excerpt:
“the storm of you / beachcollected in pieces / waterworn / carrying
glass.” There are moments when Schnitzer’s self-reflexive homage to
Stein is undeniably felt: “gertrudedips into ink sp/re a d s / as
pages in my / barn / the liquid lost of it she bites / through succulent
lounging at the door lace / leaking.”

Loving Gertrude Stein is a must-read for anyone studying Stein or
feminist challenges to language. However, from a purely, poetic
perspective, the poem is trapped and weakened by its precision and
playfulness. It is not easily accessible. While the work meets Stein’s
innovative writing on its own grounds and underscores rhythms and sounds
more than narrative sense, it does not allow the reader to bond in any
transparent or easy way with the narrator or narrative. The book,
beautiful as it is, would have been better had Schnitzer recorded a CD
to accompany it so that the “reader” could have heard the sense
Schnitzer made of Stein and Stein’s wonderful contributions to the
modern art movement and feminism.