Nellie does Gertrude

The sister, in Comp. Lit. and Society, does a sweet reading of Stein's "A Fire."

'Stumbling over this point, the reader reaches the first verb, ostensibly a moment of action, of movement, “to send.” But Stein backtracks. She counters the action by adding “and not send.” This initially appears to be a contradiction, perhaps a moment of narrative indecision (the reader, whose eye quickly sees the word letter, imagines someone staring at an envelope deciding whether to mail it or not). But, Stein is playing with attempts at imposing linearity on the poem; her game is that there is no indecision, for the time was spent sending “and” - NOT or - not sending the letter.

Further complicating the action, Stein casts this muddled verb, which has been both done and undone, as a hypothetical. She puts the “to send” dilemma within a “what . . . if” phrase, entering into the register of the scientific method. But after setting up this small system of logic, she switches her tone, becoming completely vague; the crux of the poem is an unspecified “kind of thing” which makes an unspecified “that” come in. The reader then looks for what “that” could be and, logically, uses the title: Fire. The word rests with solidity in the reader’s mind, a puzzle solved. Stein began the sentence with a questioning “what” but leaves it without a question mark. The reader already answered the question, in a way.

The last sentence, “A letter was nicely sent.” seems to offer finality. But the suspiciously simple conclusion, the sappy adverb “nicely” and the juxtaposition of fire from the previous sentence mucks the simplicity. The reader conjured the word fire, only to be confronted with “a letter.” Letters, made out of paper, burn. Stein, forcing these two ideas together, almost implicates the reader in this, seems to involve the audience in something violent. What begins as a pedantic question becomes a scientific analysis. Analysis falls away to vagueness interpreted. But interpretation destroys. The letter, whose fate dominates all of the verbs “to send,” “not send,” is put to a fiery death with the finality of “sent.” The poem is held in this tension between adding and taking, between things that “come in” and things that are sent out, between what we bring to her objects and what her objects are. On one level, Stein is teaching us how to understand her poetry. But ultimately, this piece is a warning against falling into the trap of imposing interpretation, lest we start the fire that burns.'