A Portrait in Poems
The Storied Life of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A delightful introduction to one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century art and literature. Here’s an insider’s tour of the lives of Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, amusingly addressed directly to the reader (“The next time you go to Paris …”). It explores Gertrude and Alice’s art collection, their famous writer and artist friends and even their dog, Basket. It also describes how Gertrude’s book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was not about Alice, but more about Gertrude herself! A celebration of creativity and the creative process, this innovative and readable biography champions two women who dared to live unconventional lives. Poems, paintings and Paris come to life in this enchanting book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The story begins in the middle: the middle of the Jardin du Luxembourg, at "an eight-sided pond/ where you can rent a tiny sailboat/ and set it adrift over and over again." And in the middle of Stein's adulthood, in the early 1900s at her home around the corner from the garden. Through eight short chapters, each marked with a Stein quote, Robillard elliptically traces the contours of Stein's adulthood: the portrait of her that Picasso painted, her "word portraits" and long life beside Alice B. Toklas ("a tiny, dark-haired woman... Alice would ask you lots of questions/ in her quick, quiet voice"), and their eventual deaths. Robillard eventually asserts Stein's genius "Gertrude Stein was much, much more/ than a collector of paintings/ or a nibbler of tea cakes" but Stein's brilliance, as ever, is difficult to convey, though this introduction to the figure and her partner charms. Katstaller deploys gouache, colored pencil, and graphite in blues and greens, mustards and roses, to sketch art salons and garden idylls; supplemental materials add extra biographical detail and context. Ages 6 9.
