Composition as Explanation

Gertrude Stein's "Composition as Explanation" delves into the intricate relationship between language and artistic expression. Published in 1926, the essay explores Stein's unique approach to writing and challenges conventional perceptions of composition. With a distinctive prose style, she reflects on the nature of creativity, emphasizing the significance of repetition and abstraction. Stein's work serves as both an exploration of her own artistic process and a broader commentary on the essence of language in shaping our understanding of art.


  1. 101 Great American Poems : To My Dear and Loving Husband, The Planting of the Apple-Tree, Concord Hymn, The Arrow and the Song, Alone, Annabel Lee and others

    Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Oliver Wendell Holmes Holmes, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Frances E. W. W Harper, Emily Dickinson, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Stephen Crane, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gertrude Stein, Vachel Lindsay, Claude Mckay, Countee Cullen, Amy Lowell, James Oppenheim, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emma Lazarus, Louisa May Alcott, Ellis Parker Butler, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, William Blake, Sara Teasdale, William Barnes

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  2. Everything We've Done: Female Poets of WW1

    Charlotte Mew, May Sinclair, Margaret Postgate Cole, Gertrude Stein, Katharine Tynan, Edith Wharton, Jessie Pope, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Vera Mary Brittain, Various

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  3. The Poetry of World War One

    Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Hardy, Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke, Katharine Tynan, Jessie Pope, Laurence Binyon, W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Francis Ledwidge, Ivor Gurney, Mary Borden, Gertrude Stein

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  4. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS (Modern Classics Series) : Enriched edition. Glance at the Parisian early 20th century avant-garde (One of the greatest nonfiction books of the 20th century)

    Gertrude Stein

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  5. GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Plays, Memoirs & Essays : Exploring Avant-Garde Literary Legacy

    Gertrude Stein

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  6. GERTRUDE STEIN Premium Collection: 60+ Poems, Tales & Plays in One Volume : Exploring the avant-garde world of literary innovation and modernist experimentation

    Gertrude Stein

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  7. Tender Buttons

    Gertrude Stein

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  8. The Making of Americans

    Gertrude Stein

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  9. Three Lives

    Gertrude Stein

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  10. Geography and Plays

    Gertrude Stein

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  11. Gertrude Stein - Premium Collection: 60+ Stories, Poems & Plays in One Volume : Three Lives, Tender Buttons, Geography and Plays, Matisse, Picasso and Gertrude Stein

    Gertrude Stein

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