About the book:

With joy, Dear Friend, let’s enter the concluding Steinian woods. We experienced Stein the scientist in Objects, and Stein the lover in Food. In Rooms, we complete the exploration of the Tender Buttons trilogy with Stein the storyteller plumbing the depths of the human condition. All this, an expression of Stein’s love for Alice B. Toklas.

In Volume III Rooms, the responses elicited from the 29 contributing poets reveal hidden truths about how we survive and aspire to our own loves. In the last stanza of Rooms, Stein asks, “What was the sensible decision.” T. De Los Reyes answers, “We are lost until we fall in love.” This is how we find the meaning and ecstatic pleasure of the last line in Tender Buttons, “The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus and also a fountain.”

The invitation stands to write your own response and enter the conversation with Gertrude Stein, and the book includes space where your words are welcomed.

KAREEM JAMES ABU-ZEID, PhD, is an Egyptian-American translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world who translates from Arabic, French, and German. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USXs translation prize, Poetry Magazine's translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA translation grant, among other honors. He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnejoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice, and he teaches translation workshops around the world. More at kareemjamesabuzeid.com

KARREN L. ALENIER is author of eight poetry collections-including how we hold on (Broadstone Books, 2021)-and editor or co-editor of three anthologies, including From the Belly, Volumes I, II & III. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her jazz opera with composer Bill Banfield, premiered June 2005 in New York by Encompass New Opera Theatre. More at https:// www.alenier.com/.

EJ. ANTONIO received fellowships in Poetry from the NYFA, Hurston/ Wright and Cave Canem Foundations. She is the author of two chapbooks, Every Child Knows and Solstice, and a solo jazzoetry cd Rituals in the marrow: Recipe for a jam session. Antonio is a member of The Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective and a board member of the non-profit Arts organization One Breath Rising.

JACQUELINE JOHNSON is a multi-disciplined artist creating in poetry, fiction, and fiber arts. She is author of A Woman's Season (Main Street Rag Press, 2015) and A Gathering of Mother Tongues (White Pine Press, 1998. Winner, Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award).

JULIE MARIE WADE's most recent collections are Other People's Mothers, Quick Change Artist: Poems, and The Mary Years. A finalist for the National Poetry Series and a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, Wade teaches creative writing and Tender Buttons at Florida International University in Miami.

Cover Design: Susan Pearce Design

Cover Art: The Loophole of Retreat by Ellen Driscoll