Friday, February 09, 2007

Friday Quote: On Gertrude Stein

According to a desktop page-a-day poetry snippet calendar that sits on Great Scott's desk, Gertrude Stein's editor, A. J. Fifield, once rejected one of her submissions as follows:

"I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your manuscript three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one."

--Poetry Speaks, desktop calendar

2 comments:

Beth Impson said...

I read this somewhere before and I about died laughing -- this time, too! What a great parody of Stein's technique.

Lucindyl said...

I love literary parody, as you well know. I still bemoan the day I lost the book that had in it the Winnie-the-Pooh story executed in the style of Flannery O'Connor.

:::sigh:::