Emily

Setina
Stanzas in Meditation by Gertrude Stein, an Annotated Edition
(English, College of Arts & Sciences)
Abstract:
Although Stanzas in Meditation is widely regarded as one of Gertrude Stein's most
important texts, no complete, reliable edition of the 150-page poem exists. Working as co-
editors, Susannah Hollister and I have been preparing an annotated edition of the poem for
Yale University Press, to appear in Spring 2011. The edition will be the first to present
Stanzas in its full complexity, as it changed through stages of revision to its manuscript and
two existent typescripts and across early print appearances. Our edition prints in full a
single version of the poem based on Stein's manuscript, using notes to record, in complete
lines, variants in the poems other versions. Annotations will allow scholars to follow line by
line the revisions to a poem especially remarkable in its material history and make its full
textual history available for the first time outside of the archive. In addition to prompting
renewed interest in the poem and providing material for future scholarly work, this edition
will help to correct a persistent myth about Stein's writing: the notion that she never
revised. The manuscripts and typescripts of Stanzas demonstrate that, at least in this poem,
one she valued especially, Stein did return to her writing and make rounds of changes. A
principle of accuracy operates in Stanzas, not through narrowness of reference, but through
the careful choice and placement of even generic words. Much of the value of this edition
depends on its own accuracy; the final stage of our editorial work will be to check the
Press's proofs of the reading text of the poem and its notes against the originals in the
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers in the Beinecke Library. I am applying for funding
to cover the cost of travel for this last stage of archival research on the edition.