Stein on copying

There are many that I know and they know it. They are all
of them repeating and I hear it. I love it and I tell it. I love
it and now I will write it. This is now a history of my love
of it. I hear it and I love it and I write it. They repeat it.
They live it and I see it and I hear it. They live it and I hear
it and I see it and I love it and now and always I will write
it. There are many kinds of men and women and I know
it. They repeat it and I hear it and I love it. This is now a
history of the way they do it. This is now a history of the
way I love it

Gertrude Stein

Just to drive the point home, I copied that quote from the New Yorker book blog, which copied it from Marcus Boons book ”in praise of copying” which is available free of charge here. You really have to copy and paste Stein quotes because, with the possible exception of the really short ones, her sentences are impossible to remember. The style, however, isn’t.

One of my very few poems was a tribute to Gertrude Stein. It’s a rather bad poem, in particular as I’m pretty sure that should be ”contemporary with”, not ”contemporary to”.

Dear Gertrude.

How typical of you

to be contemporary to

so few of your contemporaries