A HANDKERCHIEF

A HANDKERCHIEF

A Handkerchief by Gertrude Stein especially attracts my attention. This series of her poems all have very solid and objective titles; however, through Stein’s short few lines, she made the image of that specific object abstracted. I find it really strange and hard to interpret the first time I read it, but the mystery behind her simple words draw me to go back to it again and even to read it out loud. “A winning of all the short blessings” seemingly is to describe a handkerchief that any blessing can be enveloped. Readers don’t need special knowledge to read or interpret her poems. Because the poem itself is a creation of steam of consciousness; I think readers are expected to capture the feeling of words, not the literal meaning behind the content. Additionally, the objects she described can be seen or heard everyday. However, she provided entirely new perspectives to observe these objects that are sometimes neglected by people.

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