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Lifting Belly
Book by Stein, Gertrude
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1927
11 people are currently reading
498 people want to read
About the author
Gertrude Stein
406 books1,187 followersGertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 22, 2021
Repetitive, clunky, and with nothing of substance to say. My first glimpse of Stein’s work already leads me to believe that Alexander Theroux’s roastings in Laura Warholic were correct.
June 9, 2016
Rebecca Marks' intro is sharp until it's not. When she started to instruct us as to what Stein meant with every goddamn syllable, veering stupidly into hear-the-lady-poet-roar territory, was when I stopped reading her bit and got to the good bit.
Stein's poem is a balloon, is sex, is a funny conversation while you wrap yourself up in the phone cord until you begin to lose your balance and then spin out again. Word witch. It's a classic erotic lesbian poem, did I mention that? Most importantly it reads like licking a battery.
Stein's poem is a balloon, is sex, is a funny conversation while you wrap yourself up in the phone cord until you begin to lose your balance and then spin out again. Word witch. It's a classic erotic lesbian poem, did I mention that? Most importantly it reads like licking a battery.
June 25, 2020
This book is pretty much the best stuff ever. If you can't get into it on the page, read it aloud without trying to listen too hard.
November 29, 2022
Gertrude Stein, the lesbian that you were.
August 2, 2025
Temo di non avere un'opinione positiva su quest'opera, che ho trovato francamente inutile. Nella testa mi riecheggiavano le parole di Capote proprio sulla Stein, proferite in occasione di un'intervista rilasciata a Lawrence Grobel (riprendo da Colazione da Truman appunto di Grobel):
Qual è la sua opinione sulla Stein in quanto scrittrice?
Mi è piaciuto il suo libro su Alice. Ma per il resto... «Una cazzata è una cazzata è una cazzata...» (Ride.)
Cosa pensa della sua idea di ripetizione? Era una scelta molto consapevole da parte sua.
È un modo per riempire la pagina. Ma per quello basta che allarghi l'interlinea.
Ecco, credo di non dover aggiungere nulla alle parole (eloquentissime) di Capote...
Qual è la sua opinione sulla Stein in quanto scrittrice?
Mi è piaciuto il suo libro su Alice. Ma per il resto... «Una cazzata è una cazzata è una cazzata...» (Ride.)
Cosa pensa della sua idea di ripetizione? Era una scelta molto consapevole da parte sua.
È un modo per riempire la pagina. Ma per quello basta che allarghi l'interlinea.
Ecco, credo di non dover aggiungere nulla alle parole (eloquentissime) di Capote...
February 8, 2023
Ég fór að gráta á bókasafninu tysm
January 13, 2008
This is middle-of-the-road Stein, not too accessible, not too experimental: associative. Erotic in its rhythmics.
The phrase, in certain circles (households even), has become a shibboleth.
"Lifting belly is a special pleasure.
Who can be convinced of this measure."
The phrase, in certain circles (households even), has become a shibboleth.
"Lifting belly is a special pleasure.
Who can be convinced of this measure."
March 21, 2007
Be sure to read Rebecca Mark's introduction--it's wonderful!
June 3, 2009
It's Gertrude Stein...what more can I say?
May 8, 2013
What to say about Lifting Belly. I really enjoyed how fresh the last part became.
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August 30, 2023Gertrude Stein erotica wouldn't be Gertrude Stein erotica without cow, Caesar, butter, repetition, Pussy, question, merriment.
"Lifting belly is a language... Lifting belly is a repetition. Lifting belly means me."
"Little connections"
"Lifting belly is a quotation."
"Full of love and echoes. Lifting belly is full of love."
And: "He cannot understand women. I can. Believe me in this way. I can understand the woman."
“Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over again she
did.
I have feathers.
Gentle fishes.”
"Lifting belly is a language... Lifting belly is a repetition. Lifting belly means me."
"Little connections"
"Lifting belly is a quotation."
"Full of love and echoes. Lifting belly is full of love."
And: "He cannot understand women. I can. Believe me in this way. I can understand the woman."
“Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over again she
did.
I have feathers.
Gentle fishes.”
Read
March 4, 2025An intro/analysis and a long reprinted poem from Stein. Lifting Belly is an ode to lesbian sex & Alice B. Toklas (Stein’s partner of 40 years) Kinda felt like overhearing to your neighbors that are in love or peeking through a peephole. Parts are so earnest, bare, and intimate.
“Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did.
I have feathers.
Gentle fishes.
Do you think about apricots. We find them very beautiful. It is not alone their color it is their seeds that charm us. We find it a change.”
“Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did.
I have feathers.
Gentle fishes.
Do you think about apricots. We find them very beautiful. It is not alone their color it is their seeds that charm us. We find it a change.”
August 10, 2025
For the last month or so, I'd been on an audiobook kick and had read hardly anything. When I picked this up, I legitimately worried that I might have forgotten how to read because it made that little sense. DNF at 25% because I don't waste my time reading authors who are purposely nonsensical.
February 20, 2024
non l'ho capita ma sento che c'è qualcosa di bello
September 12, 2021
How did I miss this?! I've read Stein, even taught her, but I just learned of this book length poem last week! And it's wonderful.
One comment here says it "invented queer poetry." That's kind of hard on Sappho, but Stein did write this during WWI, which is now a while ago! It is unabashed lesbian erotica, written with such joy that even a straight dude can feel the power. The last line is "In the midst of writing there is merriment."
And that joy is all the way through the 60 pages of "Lifting Belly." I'm sure there are all sorts of puns and word plays I didn't understand, but I got enough of them to find the jokes. And to appreciate the passion. There is something in the insistent repetition that highlights the erotic. "A rose is a rose is a rose" appears here (was it the first time?) and, yes, here it is decidedly erotic, not a category I would have put it in before. If I were a scholar, I would count the number of times she wrote "lifting belly," but it's enough to say "A lot!"
She wrote this a couple of years before "Ulysses" came out and the stream of consciousness prefigures Molly Bloom's in wonderful ways. Maybe 5 years after this, Gertrude's young friend, Hemingway, started his experiments with dialogue. We can be sure he read this. Gertrude would have made him. And most of this poem is dialogue, and you can see where he learned his lessons.
But even though this is very important in the development of modernist literature, it is just so much fun to read! Once I got past the self-imposed seriousness of reading "Stein," I was pulled in and saw her in ways I've never seen her before.
One comment here says it "invented queer poetry." That's kind of hard on Sappho, but Stein did write this during WWI, which is now a while ago! It is unabashed lesbian erotica, written with such joy that even a straight dude can feel the power. The last line is "In the midst of writing there is merriment."
And that joy is all the way through the 60 pages of "Lifting Belly." I'm sure there are all sorts of puns and word plays I didn't understand, but I got enough of them to find the jokes. And to appreciate the passion. There is something in the insistent repetition that highlights the erotic. "A rose is a rose is a rose" appears here (was it the first time?) and, yes, here it is decidedly erotic, not a category I would have put it in before. If I were a scholar, I would count the number of times she wrote "lifting belly," but it's enough to say "A lot!"
She wrote this a couple of years before "Ulysses" came out and the stream of consciousness prefigures Molly Bloom's in wonderful ways. Maybe 5 years after this, Gertrude's young friend, Hemingway, started his experiments with dialogue. We can be sure he read this. Gertrude would have made him. And most of this poem is dialogue, and you can see where he learned his lessons.
But even though this is very important in the development of modernist literature, it is just so much fun to read! Once I got past the self-imposed seriousness of reading "Stein," I was pulled in and saw her in ways I've never seen her before.
January 17, 2019
"Lifting belly is so kind." Part of the amusement of this poem was reading bits of it out loud to A., who, being a stickler for form and structure, snaps at Stein for seeming never to make any sense. But I was also content to read long stretches of it to myself, sotto voce, to find the flashes and flares of intuition of a massive interconnected and un-hierarchical world, erotic, pleasant, mindful, creative. One thinks of Diotima instructing Socrates in his speech about Love in The Symposium: We are all pregnant, some pregnant of body, others, pregnant of mind. Rebecca Mark's introduction was helpful, but overall I'm glad I saved it for the end.
January 4, 2019
fairy ham
January 14, 2025
O texto é muito lindo, olhando nas entrelinhas. Demorei um tempo pra entender a dinâmica da poética, então preciso muito reler. Amo ler mulheres de palavras potentes
September 11, 2025
My response for both Lifting Belly and Patriarchal Poetry:
Gertrude Stein’s use of alliteration and repetition in both “Lifting Belly” and “Patriarchal Poetry” creates an anchor for both texts the way a volta cures a sonnet. The recurring use of the title phrases turn passages from each into resolutions, while maintaining an unwavering assertion of her intention. While the works differ in subject matter, the forcefulness evokes both a plea to be understood, and a resignation of never being fully understood.
“Patriarchal Poetry,” comes across as Stein mocking a male-led world, claiming them to be self-righteous and bound to rules they’ve created and thus are too proud to break. It was visually confusing, like a cypher or a riddle, but reading passages aloud I found it to be chant-like and guttural. Alliteration tactfully forms pockets of double meaning, and I was very drawn to her asking questions beginning with “What is the difference.” I loved the ambiguity of her asking—it varied at times between a “what is the difference?” as in “are these two things so different” and “these two things are critically dissimilar, pay attention.”
One example that stood out was on page 122: “What is the difference between right away and a pearl there is this difference between right away and a pearl a pearl is milk white and right away is at once. This is indeed an explanation.” The use of a “pearl” against ”right away” insinuates that a ”pearl” is the inverse of “right away.” A “pearl�� is an object that embodies a lot of femininity: a “pearl” comes from an oyster, which is often used as a euphemism for female anatomy, the ocean, the image of the ”Birth of Venus” from a shell, a ”pearl” being a metaphor for the moon which is feminine in most divinations and polytheistic religions. “Milk” being used as an adjective for the “pearl”—“milk” as literally a physical product of women. Measured against “right away,” which is not only not a noun, but is as rushed as its words mean. “Right away” plays a role of antithesis to the femininity of a “pearl,” implying that “right away” embodies a male energy, a patriarchal energy. It lands for me as women are patient, beautiful and intentional, and men (in this context, men in the role of critic or intellectual) are demanding and forceful. Though there are many comparisons of this ilk throughout the text, this in particular gave me the most clarity on the meaning of her selections. Aside from the intentionally chosen imagery, on a structural level I felt her hypnotic and repetitive chants to be a “fuck you” more than anything—intending to make a spectacle of rules she gladly breaks.
“Lifting Belly” on the other hand, carried a similar distaste for men, but more explicitly, heteronormativity.
I initially read Stein’s “Lifting Belly” as a conversation. I went from interpreting ”Lifting Belly” as her real life partner, but then felt redirected by language that implied it may be a personification of her sexuality as a whole. After reading more about this work, I feel more grounded in its classification as an ode to her partner, but the impression of “Lifting Belly” as a metaphorical presence still remains for me. The reason I debate this, while the evocation of desire and natural urge are ever-present, there are call-and-responses that stood out to me as a conversation one would have with oneself in regards to sexuality, and particularly queer sexuality in a time/culture that doesn’t support it. The “evils of eating,” (Pg. 5) stands out—and in a biblical sense I interpret as eating a forbidden fruit. Fruit being used as euphemism (along with other natural comparisons) for female anatomy; i.e. the apricot, the fig, etc., signal an acknowledgment of perceived sin. Not by Stein, but by societal contention against queer relationships through Stein.
I shifted toward reading “Lifting Belly” as an act more than a personification, and felt I most understood it in that context. The repetition of it bellows throughout argument, action, discussion of other parties, marveling at each other, etc. and it creates a sense of steadfastness, something as steady and inherent as sexuality and also love. The idea that “Lifting Belly” can be read as a whisper or a declaration is interesting to me—where at times “Lifting Belly” is used explicitly when making love to her partner, but echoes beneath in reference to other day to day activities, like love and sexuality that are always a part of ourselves; not quite hidden, but sometimes quieter. I’m also attracted to the etymology of the chosen repeated words. “Lifting,” as an act of uncovering, empowering, holding up, and ”Belly” as in showing one’s belly, a vulnerability. To uncover, and to lay bare and to reiterate that the urge is unchanging throughout the text is a beautiful dedication to her partner. In an effort to acknowledge the perception of traditional views against them, Stein assures her recipient that what they’re doing is natural and powerful. “We do not encourage a nightingale” (Pg. 43) and “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” (Pg. 35). The use of natural imagery across this text symbolizes the naturalness of sexuality and attraction.
Gertrude Stein’s use of alliteration and repetition in both “Lifting Belly” and “Patriarchal Poetry” creates an anchor for both texts the way a volta cures a sonnet. The recurring use of the title phrases turn passages from each into resolutions, while maintaining an unwavering assertion of her intention. While the works differ in subject matter, the forcefulness evokes both a plea to be understood, and a resignation of never being fully understood.
“Patriarchal Poetry,” comes across as Stein mocking a male-led world, claiming them to be self-righteous and bound to rules they’ve created and thus are too proud to break. It was visually confusing, like a cypher or a riddle, but reading passages aloud I found it to be chant-like and guttural. Alliteration tactfully forms pockets of double meaning, and I was very drawn to her asking questions beginning with “What is the difference.” I loved the ambiguity of her asking—it varied at times between a “what is the difference?” as in “are these two things so different” and “these two things are critically dissimilar, pay attention.”
One example that stood out was on page 122: “What is the difference between right away and a pearl there is this difference between right away and a pearl a pearl is milk white and right away is at once. This is indeed an explanation.” The use of a “pearl” against ”right away” insinuates that a ”pearl” is the inverse of “right away.” A “pearl�� is an object that embodies a lot of femininity: a “pearl” comes from an oyster, which is often used as a euphemism for female anatomy, the ocean, the image of the ”Birth of Venus” from a shell, a ”pearl” being a metaphor for the moon which is feminine in most divinations and polytheistic religions. “Milk” being used as an adjective for the “pearl”—“milk” as literally a physical product of women. Measured against “right away,” which is not only not a noun, but is as rushed as its words mean. “Right away” plays a role of antithesis to the femininity of a “pearl,” implying that “right away” embodies a male energy, a patriarchal energy. It lands for me as women are patient, beautiful and intentional, and men (in this context, men in the role of critic or intellectual) are demanding and forceful. Though there are many comparisons of this ilk throughout the text, this in particular gave me the most clarity on the meaning of her selections. Aside from the intentionally chosen imagery, on a structural level I felt her hypnotic and repetitive chants to be a “fuck you” more than anything—intending to make a spectacle of rules she gladly breaks.
“Lifting Belly” on the other hand, carried a similar distaste for men, but more explicitly, heteronormativity.
I initially read Stein’s “Lifting Belly” as a conversation. I went from interpreting ”Lifting Belly” as her real life partner, but then felt redirected by language that implied it may be a personification of her sexuality as a whole. After reading more about this work, I feel more grounded in its classification as an ode to her partner, but the impression of “Lifting Belly” as a metaphorical presence still remains for me. The reason I debate this, while the evocation of desire and natural urge are ever-present, there are call-and-responses that stood out to me as a conversation one would have with oneself in regards to sexuality, and particularly queer sexuality in a time/culture that doesn’t support it. The “evils of eating,” (Pg. 5) stands out—and in a biblical sense I interpret as eating a forbidden fruit. Fruit being used as euphemism (along with other natural comparisons) for female anatomy; i.e. the apricot, the fig, etc., signal an acknowledgment of perceived sin. Not by Stein, but by societal contention against queer relationships through Stein.
I shifted toward reading “Lifting Belly” as an act more than a personification, and felt I most understood it in that context. The repetition of it bellows throughout argument, action, discussion of other parties, marveling at each other, etc. and it creates a sense of steadfastness, something as steady and inherent as sexuality and also love. The idea that “Lifting Belly” can be read as a whisper or a declaration is interesting to me—where at times “Lifting Belly” is used explicitly when making love to her partner, but echoes beneath in reference to other day to day activities, like love and sexuality that are always a part of ourselves; not quite hidden, but sometimes quieter. I’m also attracted to the etymology of the chosen repeated words. “Lifting,” as an act of uncovering, empowering, holding up, and ”Belly” as in showing one’s belly, a vulnerability. To uncover, and to lay bare and to reiterate that the urge is unchanging throughout the text is a beautiful dedication to her partner. In an effort to acknowledge the perception of traditional views against them, Stein assures her recipient that what they’re doing is natural and powerful. “We do not encourage a nightingale” (Pg. 43) and “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” (Pg. 35). The use of natural imagery across this text symbolizes the naturalness of sexuality and attraction.
November 8, 2025
At first, I struggled with this poem. It seemed so non-sensical that my mind just created a barrier between me and the words. I was sure I couldn’t understand what Stein was writing about, that I wasn’t ‘smart’ enough yet (I am in my undergrad, and desperate to become more learned and well-read).
But I continued to read, and I read it aloud. I fell into the rhythm, and found myself carrying a strange conversation with a lover. The passion and love came through the words, even without stringing together correctly. I did not need to ‘understand’ to understand the speaker.
This poem has reminded me to accept that some things are still beyond my grasp, but that that is the beauty of reading and writing. We make our own meaning.
But I continued to read, and I read it aloud. I fell into the rhythm, and found myself carrying a strange conversation with a lover. The passion and love came through the words, even without stringing together correctly. I did not need to ‘understand’ to understand the speaker.
This poem has reminded me to accept that some things are still beyond my grasp, but that that is the beauty of reading and writing. We make our own meaning.
November 13, 2017
It was fun cool to see v experimental early 20th century poetry
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November 11, 2021The most abstract and yet highly intimate poetry that is somehow distinctly characteristic of lesbian love
A beautiful read if you can get your hands on it.
A beautiful read if you can get your hands on it.
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February 25, 2024exquisite
July 8, 2024
cute. i thought we'd enjoy it more than we did based on the title. Got a bit boring after the first half.
April 4, 2025
Drunk ramblings is not poetry.. bekar!
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June 26, 2025I can’t even rate this be because I have no idea what I just read and the only context online is 60 page academic articles. I’m sorry has NO ONE figured out what this is about?
February 28, 2021
invented queer poetry
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews