I understand “If I Told Him” is a very complex poem and relates to cubism.
I guess I am not able to understand it and all it does is irritate
me.  When reading it to myself at first I just noticed my mind rambling on.  I
felt like she was saying a tongue twister.It sounds completely idiotic but I was then thinking about all the tongue twisters I knew.  “She sells seashells by the seashore.  The shellsshe sells are surely seashells.  So if she sells shells on the seashore, I’m sure she sells seashore shells.”  I just wanted to escape every part of Gertrude Stein.

When listening to her I noticed I became very angry.  It sounded like a woman complaining about every little thing.  Like my mother scolding me for
not picking up a little piece of dirt. It escalates from the dirt to not cleaning my room to not making my bed.  How one little thing escalates to the one million other things I do wrong.  She just did not stop speaking.

The last thing that I noticed I was doing while listening and doing the automatic
writing, was I was starting to write in that same annoying form.  I was mocking her but it still made me angrier.  I felt like she was nagging me and my writing was all about making her shut up.  I know my whole opinion sounds really bad but I could not find
any deeper meaning.  I was just so frustrated by what I was either reading or listening to my mind would not let me get anything useful out of it.  I do know now that if I ever am a boxer before I go into the ring I will not listen to music to pump me up.  I will play
this poem and I will get so angry I’d be more than ready to fight.

If she told me would I get it. Would I get it if she told me. Would I get it would Lady Gaga would Lady Gaga would would I get it. If Lady Gaga if she told me if she told me if Lady Gaga. Would I get it if she if she told me. If she told me if Lady Gaga if Lady Gaga if she told me. If she told me would I get it would I get it if she told me.

The reading experience of Gertrude Stein is quite dramatic, even though it’s beyond my knowledge. But through our class discussion, it seems I am not alone. I don’t really think “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” is a poem. I would rather consider it as an art form. It makes more sense when it is performed since I find it more and more interesting when listening to the audio then just reading the words. I remember Prof. Kaufman mentioned in last class, Gertrude Stein didn’t think grammar is important, therefore, if we try to understand from the words themselves, it’s supposed to be hard to understand. However, if we take out the key words which are repeated several times, there’s whole picture in our minds. This is the most interesting thing I’ve found when reading such a combination of random but related words. The symbols that are being used in the poem itself are quite common but there’s seems to be a story hidden behind the poem. Sometimes it also sounds like a conflict in one’s mind. It is like a dialogue. Most of the time, we are confined by our imagination but if we read Stein’s poems, we have to broaden our visions in order to portrait our own images. Again, it is so amazing and dramatic.

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” (Stein, Sacred Emily)

Gertrude Stein is Gertrude Stein.

Reading the Gertrude Stein piece “If I Told Him. A Completed Portrait of Picasso” was a very strange experience.  I came into the reading with some reservations, which were mainly the result of hearing the professor say that her previous classes often became frustrated by the readings.  It only took one line to understand what Professor Kaufman meant.  From the first line, “If I told him would he like it.” I noticed that the punctuation was off.  Why did the author put a period where there should be a question mark?  That’s one of the very first rules of learning how to write in English, yet it was completely violated. I raised an eyebrow and shrugged it off, I ultimately continued through it. Mentally and automatically, I put question marks in place where I felt there needed to be question marks.

The second sentence seemed to be a play on words, simply forming a statement by switching words to say something similar.  However, by the second line, I completely lost the vibe that the author intended to play around with a single sentence, and actually began to question what her intention was.  Not only was the third statement poorly constructed, but it wasn’t even a sentence.  I read it once, and was confused. I felt my tongue tripping on itself. I tried it again, it had the same effect.  Then there was the fact that the name “Napoleon” came out of left field.  At this point, I decided to look up information about the author and I found out that she worked alongside William James, one of the first American psychologists.  Then I read about “automatic writing” and “stream of consciousness.”  At this point, I probably got even more confused.  Why would she be thinking about Napoleon of all people or things?

I had no idea, and still have no idea what she meant by her repeated statements involving “now” which were pretty contradictory. Honestly, at that point, I had given up hope in trying to find a deeper meaning.  I didn’t want to bother trying to crawl inside of the head of a mad-woman. No rhyme, no reason, and I can’t even see an association of thoughts save for a possible link between “Napoleon,” “kings,” and later a mention of “queens.”  But shutters? Couldn’t understand that in the slightest. The repetitions of these unrelated terms made me even more bewildered.  At that point I was stumbling and stuttering my way through it.  I was hacking my way through the poem–butchering it, as Stein hacked through my conventional knowledge of the English language. Unfortunately for me, there were more repetitions of seemingly unrelated terms (exactly, resemblance, he, and, as, is, presently, proportions, land).  No more understanding, no more trying to find a meaning, I just read it (as disjointedly as the poem) until the end.

By reading this, just this, my head pounds, just pounds and pounds. For each word ask why. By reading this my head pounds and I ask why. Repeat yourself more woman, I can’t fully understand, understand, understand me, understand you. Repeat repeat and ask why. What’s delightful? Delightful in the path I chose, chose, chose to walk. For each step I take I steal a star, there’s no moon here no moon, no moon here. Repeat yourself more till I strangle myself with this H&M scarf, what if I took and pumpkin, roses with thorns and threw it at you? What if I threw them, threw them straight to you. Eat both of them dry for your words are the same. The same words the same words, I repeat the same words. Repeat yourself till I dread the next seconds, seconds, and more seconds whiling writing this to you, to you and only you. Repeat, my head pounds, I rather being pushing up daisies, more daisies and more daisies then a dead man could.

My rant is done.