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Gertrude Stein first published her experimental poem "Tender Buttons" as a slender volume by a small, avant-garde press. Years later, it would be anthologized and is most accessible currently in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. In contrast, "Lifting Belly" first appeared in Stein's collection, Bee Time Vine, was then anthologized in The Yale Gertrude Stein, and most recently appeared as a slender volume by a small, marginalized press. Rebecca Mark, editor of this 1989 edition, claims, "With the publication of this edition, lesbians will be able to read what many critics have called a lesbian classic, and Stein and 'Lifting Belly' will find an audience of women who love women . . . she has given lesbians a great gift" (Mark xxxii). 1 Mark's introductory comments celebrate one of the most frequently considered aspects of the poem, namely its unabashed lesbian eroticism. Throughout its fifty pages, much of the poem consists of dialogue and conversational fragments between two lovers. Much of the dialogue is erotic; some is indecipherable pillow talk. "Lifting Belly" is, however, much more than an anthem of lesbian love. It is a story of lovers existing in a time and place of war. The poem reflects how the war affects their lives and how they cope with the anxiety of it.
In describing "Lifting Belly," Bettina Knapp states, "Within the outwardly daily trivia reported in the lines of this intentionally disparate and fragmented work, are intimations, illusions and outright references to the sexual pleasures Stein experiences" (Knapp 91). In this single sentence, Knapp mentions the three aspects of "Lifting Belly" that have drawn repeated critical comment. In addition to its lesbian eroticism, the poem's language play and focus on everyday aspects of life seem to fascinate most critics. The First World War, raging at the time the poem was composed, is normally relegated to the position of an intrusive, albeit important, backdrop for the lovers who are the subject of the poem. Harriet Scott Chessman, writing on Stein's language, notes, "'Lifting Belly' makes scattered references to the Great War throughout the poem, yet the war remains an emphatically peripheral phenomenon, marginal to the love of words and the love touched upon by the words" (Chessman 106). Stein's references to the war form...