Nothing Elegant

In class last Tuesday we were to pick a Gertrude Steiner poem to analyze.  As soon as I heard the word poem I wanted to scream.  Poems.... I could go on for days and days about how I have never understood them and dislike them, but I won't.  So, I started to read Nothing Elegant:

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

I must say I was pretty mind blown.  What in the world was this lady talking about!?  I started with the title which seemed pretty easy.  The word "elegant" to me means rich and proper, but the word "nothing" in front of it makes it seem like the poem is not about rich things and such.   That is why I was confused.  The poem talked about charms and red roses so why did Steiner title this Nothing Elegant?

I left my analysis at that for the class period but I decided to look further into it for this weeks blog post.  It seemed like everything in the poem was unrelated... It would jump from one thing to another and nothing seemed to flow.  I like things that are orderly and flow so I think this is why it was hard for me to grasp Steiners poem.  I decided to google Gertrude Steiner and try to figure out what it was about.  I figured out that she is really into fashion.  So I applied that to the poem and it started to make a little more sense. 

So basically my interpretation of Nothings Elegant was that no object is singular and everything is never ending, things keep being created and changing.... And maybe that is why the things in her poem seem unrelated.