A Portrait in Poems: The Storied Life of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Gr 1-4–Robillard and Katstaller offer a lively introduction to modernism and the literary scene in 1920s Paris. The text presents a “storied life” of poet and novelist Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. The book begins with Stein’s Left Bank residence at 27 Rue de Fleurus, where she and her brother Leo began their art collection, followed by a peek into the salon Stein and Toklas ran (including cultural and literary figures like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway), and then highlights of Stein’s writing career. The story of Picasso’s painting of Stein is later revisited in Stein’s “word portrait” of Picasso. Stein writes, “Would he like it would Napoleon/ would Napoleon would would he/ like it.” Stein’s poem could be interpreted as a puzzling portrait of Picasso; most readers would want to know how words about Napoleon represent Picasso. Readers can see how Stein’s radical approach to capturing Picasso also opens up questions about power in their relationship. The book concludes with a time line, a bibliography, and an author’s note reflecting on the survival of Stein’s art collection through Nazi occupation during World War II. Katstaller’s illustrations playfully reflect modernism in simple ways; in one scene, there is a high-angle perspective of the paintings hanging in Stein’s salon in her Paris apartment, which depicted altered viewpoints.