The Art In Poetry & The Poetry In Art, Part 1

Jerome Rothenberg:

There was a curious and probably terminal moment in the relation between Picasso and Gertrude Stein that came at a time – in 1935 – when Picasso found himself unable to paint and turned to writing, to poetry, as an alternative form of expression. When he showed some of the resultant work to Stein – or read it to her as the story goes – her response was quick and unequivocal. “The egotism of a painter,” she wrote and lectured him in explanation, “is an entirely different egotism than the egotism of a writer.” And again, recounting the event on her own: “This was his life for two years, of course he who could write, write so well with drawings and with colours, knew very well that to write with words was, for him, not to write at all.” In saying which, she deliberately extended her conclusion to all painters, who are by nature and by vocation different from all writers.

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