The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition.2014 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten corrections—found in a first-edition copy at the University of Colorado—as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has assembled a text with over one hundred emendations, resulting in the first version of Tender Buttons that truly reflects its author's intentions. These changes are detailed in Perlow's "Note on the Text," which describes the editorial process and lists the specific variants for the benefit of future scholars. The book includes facsimile images of some of Stein's handwritten edits and lists of corrections, as well as an afterword by noted contemporary poet and scholar Juliana Spahr. A compact, attractive edition suitable for general readers as well as scholars, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition is unique among the available versions of this classic text and is destined to become the standard.Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was one of the most important and innovative American writers of literary modernism, as well as one of the great art collectors and salon hosts of the period. A pioneering lesbian writer, Stein lived most of her life in Paris but became a celebrity in the United States with the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).Seth Perlow teaches English at Oklahoma State University.Juliana Spahr teaches writing at Mills College."Tender Buttons was recently reissued by City Lights Books, to mark the centennial of a volume that broke language barriers, acknowledging hungers to see more. It challenged with inspired daring."--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus"For the centennial of this masterpiece, Seth Perlow has given us much the best edition of the poem, based on Stein’s manuscript and corrections she made to the first edition. Punctuation, spelling, format, and a few phrases are affected and most especially the change in the capitalization of the section titles. 'The difference is spreading.'"--Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions"Happy 100th birthday, TENDER BUTTONS. You are as explosive, tantalizing, and delicious as you were on the day you were born. Your birthday gift from Seth Perlow and Juliana Spahr is a beautiful new edition that will carry you into your next century, the best edition ever. Your birthday gift from all of us who love literature and culture is to buy this edition for ourselves and all our friends. Congratulations to all."--Catharine R. Stimpson, Professor, New York University, and co-editor of the two-volume Gertrude Stein: Writings published by the Library of America“The publication of an authoritative edition of Tender Buttons, with Stein’s hitherto unpublished corrections and editions, is a splendid way to celebrate the centennial of this influential modernist work. Scholars will benefit from the full documentation, and readers will appreciate its convenient format, which resembles the original publication.”--Jonathan Culler, Cornell University"This radical multi-dimensional generative cubist text with the simplest words imaginable continues to alter and shape poetics into the post post modernist future. We have Gertrude Stein's 'mind grammar' operating at full tilt, with unpredictability, wit and sensory prevarication. Look to the 'minutes particulars,' Blake admonished, and here she does just that: 'it is a winning cake.' Salvos to the editor and salient 'afterword' that give belletristic notes and political perspective as well. A unique edition."--Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Electronics have transformed the study of literary manuscripts and made the appearance of handwriting a powerful token of literary quality, argues Seth Perlow in this fascinating examination. Most histories of textual media privilege the printing press, the typewriter, and their electronic successors, but this project builds a quirkier genealogy of equipment used to capture, analyze, and reproduce images of handwriting. The Digital Hand finds handwritten literature in online manuscript archives and in the feeds of Instagram poets, in the labs of forensic handwriting examiners and machine learning researchers, and even under the arms of pen-wielding robots. Through close readings of literature both canonical and contemporary—by Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Renee Gladman, Robert Grenier, and others—this book demonstrates that the meaning of a manuscript depends upon the equipment that mediates it. The opening chapters, on gesture and drawing, view manuscripts as traces of the writer's physical motions; later chapters, on signature and character, see handwriting as representative of an author's identity and style. The closing chapter, on archives, argues that the structures of online manuscript collections influence what facts we find in handwriting. By situating handwritten literature in its electronic contexts, The Digital Hand confronts longstanding uncertainties about what literary scholars can learn from handwriting and how.

Electronics have transformed the study of literary manuscripts and made the appearance of handwriting a powerful token of literary quality, argues Seth Perlow in this fascinating examination. Most histories of textual media privilege the printing press, the typewriter, and their electronic successors, but this project builds a quirkier genealogy of equipment used to capture, analyze, and reproduce images of handwriting. The Digital Hand finds handwritten literature in online manuscript archives and in the feeds of Instagram poets, in the labs of forensic handwriting examiners and machine learning researchers, and even under the arms of pen-wielding robots. Through close readings of literature both canonical and contemporary—by Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Renee Gladman, Robert Grenier, and others—this book demonstrates that the meaning of a manuscript depends upon the equipment that mediates it. The opening chapters, on gesture and drawing, view manuscripts as traces of the writer's physical motions; later chapters, on signature and character, see handwriting as representative of an author's identity and style. The closing chapter, on archives, argues that the structures of online manuscript collections influence what facts we find in handwriting. By situating handwritten literature in its electronic contexts, The Digital Hand confronts longstanding uncertainties about what literary scholars can learn from handwriting and how.

An enlightening examination of the relationship between poetry and the information technologies increasingly used to read and write itMany poets and their readers believe poetry helps us escape straightforward, logical ways of thinking. But what happens when poems confront the extraordinarily rational information technologies that are everywhere in the academy, not to mention everyday life?Examining a broad array of electronics-including the radio, telephone, tape recorder, Cold War–era computers, and modern-day web browsers-Seth Perlow considers how these technologies transform poems that we don’t normally consider “digital.” From fetishistic attachments to digital images of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts to Jackson Mac Low’s appropriation of a huge book of random numbers originally used to design thermonuclear weapons, these investigations take Perlow through a revealingly eclectic array of work, offering both exciting new voices and reevaluations of poets we thought we knew.With close readings of Gertrude Stein, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, and many others, The Poem Electric constructs a distinctive lineage of experimental writers, from the 1860s to today. Ultimately, Perlow mounts an important investigation into how electronic media allows us to distinguish poetic thought from rationalism. Posing a necessary challenge to the privilege of information in the digital humanities, The Poem Electric develops new ways of reading poetry, alongside and against the electronic equipment that is now ubiquitous in our world.

The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition.2014 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten corrections—found in a first-edition copy at the University of Colorado—as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has assembled a text with over one hundred emendations, resulting in the first version of Tender Buttons that truly reflects its author's intentions. These changes are detailed in Perlow's "Note on the Text," which describes the editorial process and lists the specific variants for the benefit of future scholars. The book includes facsimile images of some of Stein's handwritten edits and lists of corrections, as well as an afterword by noted contemporary poet and scholar Juliana Spahr. A compact, attractive edition suitable for general readers as well as scholars, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition is unique among the available versions of this classic text and is destined to become the standard.Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was one of the most important and innovative American writers of literary modernism, as well as one of the great art collectors and salon hosts of the period. A pioneering lesbian writer, Stein lived most of her life in Paris but became a celebrity in the United States with the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).Seth Perlow teaches English at Oklahoma State University.Juliana Spahr teaches writing at Mills College."Tender Buttons was recently reissued by City Lights Books, to mark the centennial of a volume that broke language barriers, acknowledging hungers to see more. It challenged with inspired daring."--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus"For the centennial of this masterpiece, Seth Perlow has given us much the best edition of the poem, based on Stein’s manuscript and corrections she made to the first edition. Punctuation, spelling, format, and a few phrases are affected and most especially the change in the capitalization of the section titles. 'The difference is spreading.'"--Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions"Happy 100th birthday, TENDER BUTTONS. You are as explosive, tantalizing, and delicious as you were on the day you were born. Your birthday gift from Seth Perlow and Juliana Spahr is a beautiful new edition that will carry you into your next century, the best edition ever. Your birthday gift from all of us who love literature and culture is to buy this edition for ourselves and all our friends. Congratulations to all."--Catharine R. Stimpson, Professor, New York University, and co-editor of the two-volume Gertrude Stein: Writings published by the Library of America“The publication of an authoritative edition of Tender Buttons, with Stein’s hitherto unpublished corrections and editions, is a splendid way to celebrate the centennial of this influential modernist work. Scholars will benefit from the full documentation, and readers will appreciate its convenient format, which resembles the original publication.”--Jonathan Culler, Cornell University"This radical multi-dimensional generative cubist text with the simplest words imaginable continues to alter and shape poetics into the post post modernist future. We have Gertrude Stein's 'mind grammar' operating at full tilt, with unpredictability, wit and sensory prevarication. Look to the 'minutes particulars,' Blake admonished, and here she does just that: 'it is a winning cake.' Salvos to the editor and salient 'afterword' that give belletristic notes and political perspective as well. A unique edition."--Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Electronics have transformed the study of literary manuscripts and made the appearance of handwriting a powerful token of literary quality, argues Seth Perlow in this fascinating examination. Most histories of textual media privilege the printing press, the typewriter, and their electronic successors, but this project builds a quirkier genealogy of equipment used to capture, analyze, and reproduce images of handwriting. The Digital Hand finds handwritten literature in online manuscript archives and in the feeds of Instagram poets, in the labs of forensic handwriting examiners and machine learning researchers, and even under the arms of pen-wielding robots. Through close readings of literature both canonical and contemporary—by Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Renee Gladman, Robert Grenier, and others—this book demonstrates that the meaning of a manuscript depends upon the equipment that mediates it. The opening chapters, on gesture and drawing, view manuscripts as traces of the writer's physical motions; later chapters, on signature and character, see handwriting as representative of an author's identity and style. The closing chapter, on archives, argues that the structures of online manuscript collections influence what facts we find in handwriting. By situating handwritten literature in its electronic contexts, The Digital Hand confronts longstanding uncertainties about what literary scholars can learn from handwriting and how.

Electronics have transformed the study of literary manuscripts and made the appearance of handwriting a powerful token of literary quality, argues Seth Perlow in this fascinating examination. Most histories of textual media privilege the printing press, the typewriter, and their electronic successors, but this project builds a quirkier genealogy of equipment used to capture, analyze, and reproduce images of handwriting. The Digital Hand finds handwritten literature in online manuscript archives and in the feeds of Instagram poets, in the labs of forensic handwriting examiners and machine learning researchers, and even under the arms of pen-wielding robots. Through close readings of literature both canonical and contemporary—by Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Renee Gladman, Robert Grenier, and others—this book demonstrates that the meaning of a manuscript depends upon the equipment that mediates it. The opening chapters, on gesture and drawing, view manuscripts as traces of the writer's physical motions; later chapters, on signature and character, see handwriting as representative of an author's identity and style. The closing chapter, on archives, argues that the structures of online manuscript collections influence what facts we find in handwriting. By situating handwritten literature in its electronic contexts, The Digital Hand confronts longstanding uncertainties about what literary scholars can learn from handwriting and how.

An enlightening examination of the relationship between poetry and the information technologies increasingly used to read and write itMany poets and their readers believe poetry helps us escape straightforward, logical ways of thinking. But what happens when poems confront the extraordinarily rational information technologies that are everywhere in the academy, not to mention everyday life?Examining a broad array of electronics-including the radio, telephone, tape recorder, Cold War–era computers, and modern-day web browsers-Seth Perlow considers how these technologies transform poems that we don’t normally consider “digital.” From fetishistic attachments to digital images of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts to Jackson Mac Low’s appropriation of a huge book of random numbers originally used to design thermonuclear weapons, these investigations take Perlow through a revealingly eclectic array of work, offering both exciting new voices and reevaluations of poets we thought we knew.With close readings of Gertrude Stein, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, and many others, The Poem Electric constructs a distinctive lineage of experimental writers, from the 1860s to today. Ultimately, Perlow mounts an important investigation into how electronic media allows us to distinguish poetic thought from rationalism. Posing a necessary challenge to the privilege of information in the digital humanities, The Poem Electric develops new ways of reading poetry, alongside and against the electronic equipment that is now ubiquitous in our world.