Poem in London Grip

How exciting! My poem ‘Is Gertrude Stein’s Frog Smoking in Your Attic Too?’ is now live at the excellent London Grip in their Winter issue along with many excellent poets. Many thanks to editor, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs. Take a look at London Grip here and why not look at my poem while you’re there.

I am highly suspicious of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), veering, it must be said, towards disgust. She led a fascinating life with her odd comments, (famously: ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose‘*) her Paris salons, the friendships with the great Parisian artists of that time: Bonnard, Picasso, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Renoir; also writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Henri Rousseau. She was a modernist and loved Cubism, and who doesn’t like that? On the other hand she was mentor to that infamous misogynist, Hemingway; she endorsed the Spanish dictator General Franco and supported him in the Spanish civil war, and although Jewish, seems to have collaborated with Marshall Pétain and the Vichy France government who deported many thousands of Jews to their death in the Nazi concentration camps. What was she thinking? Rhetorical question, of course because we know. She was no shrinking violet and she isn’t a laughing matter.

In this photograph, she looks austere but she seems to have a glass of what might be a very small sherry on the table along with cup of tea or coffee (I’m not sure that coffee and sherry go together well) and she and Alice each have their own personal ash trays. Gertrude has picked the most comfortable chair and is not averse to unusual footwear. She has so many pictures up on a wall that shows signs of damp and what might be a structural crack in the plaster to the left of the fireplace. She has an eclectic collection of bric a brac. I am absolutely certain that, if anyone had a frog (either real, surreal or metaphorical) smoking in their attic, it would be she. And possibly you.

If you’re interested, this is a pretty good introduction to her and her work:

*’Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose‘ a famous Gertrude Stein quote from her poem, ‘Sacred Emily’ (1922). The first ‘Rose’ refers to a person. A useful Wiki entry explains the rest here.