Gregory Orr on "Tender Buttons"

Today I went with Professor Cassel to see Gregory Orr at the University of Cincinnati. All I can say is, those of you who showed lack of interest or were unable to attend missed out on a wonderful opportunity. (Especially all of you English majors!) I could not be more proud of my decision to take the day off and hang out with our professor and a famous poet. I would like to point out one thing in particular that was said during Orr's lecture. In response to a question about his feelings toward lyrical poetry, Orr spoke about Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons. He maintains a strong belief that words have a purpose, and that purpose is to have meaning. He said there is a covenant that should not be broken, a covenant between words and the world. Orr continued by saying it is not to reader's responsibility to "figure out" the meaning behind Stein's experimental mess, e.g.., Did she mean something? If so, what did she mean? Is the blind glass really a glass or  is it the nearsightedness of a war-stricken nation? He feels that words in a poem should arouse some type of obvious emotion or feeling, something of which the reader can easily relate. I do not know about you, but I think he answered our original question of "What is literature?" Apparently, in the eyes of Gregory Orr and many others in our class, Tender Buttons does not make the cut.