A Body, That Is A Vain Vessel

I really liked Gertrude Stein’s use of defamiliarisation and how she equated her way of thinking with Picasso. I think after reading this I got a better grasp of Stein’s meaning in “A Carafe, That Is A Blind Glass” and found myself inspired by her fresh perspective on an otherwise, ordinary water pitcher. I appreciated having to sift through her poem several times before understanding it. I also found it helpful to have Picasso’s work as a reference so in some ways my imitation poem was inspired by this painting:

by Pablo PIcasso
1937

A Body, That Is a Vain Vessel

A thick conglomeration of inflated flesh, a living and nothing special a hard-boiled look and an agreement of loud genetic codes. All this is humdrum, systemized in a convex mirror. The reality is milk and water.

I tried to follow Stein’s format by stating the object in the title, describing the object in the first sentence, putting it in context for the second sentence and stating my argument in the last sentence. For Gertrude Stein she introduces the carafe then she goes on to explain that what she has just done wasn’t just an “unordered” misrepresentation, but a different perspective. Or, in the last sentence she alludes to the spreading of a difference and I take her to mean the difference of perspective that her and Picasso apparently share.

In my poem I’m describing a vain man looking at himself in a convex mirror, who in reality, is a rather bland looking fellow. The title is the description of the man along with the first sentence. The second sentence puts him in context and the last is my argument. The Picasso painting inspired the “a thick conglomeration of inflated flesh” line in my poem because that’s what the bathers look like in my perspective.