Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays.
Born in West Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, making France her home for the remainder of her life. A literary innovator and pioneer of Modernist literature, Stein’s work broke with the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of 19th-century. She was also known as a collector of Modernist art.
In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of cult literary figure into the light of mainstream attention.
A LONG DRESS
Gertrude Stein
That is the current that makes machinery,
that makes it crackle,
what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist.
What is this current.
What is the wind, what is it.
Where is the serene length,
it is there and a dark place is not a dark place,
only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue,
a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it.
A line just distinguishes it.