In her 1975 poem “Yesterday,” New York-based poet Fran Winant assumes the voice of Gertrude Stein addressing her lover, Alice B. Toklas. The poem animated what lesbians of 1970s knew but history often denied: the intimate and erotic connections between women.
Winant—a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front in 1969 and its sister group, Radicalesbians, in 1970—started Violet Press in 1971 in order to publish her first chapbook, Looking at Women. The press went on to print We Are All Lesbians (1973), one of the first lesbian poetry anthologies. Winant put out two more of her own collections through Violet Press, Dyke Jacket: Poems and Songs (1975) and Goddess of Lesbian Dreams: Poems and Songs (1980).
Winant’s poetry reflects the unfolding of lesbian feminist thought over the ’70s and touches on major milestones of the gay and lesbian movement. Her collections were notable for combining poems with songs and images, such as her portrait of Toklas (below).
In “Yesterday” Winant voices Stein traveling through the French countryside with Toklas. She captures the domestic intimacy between Stein and Toklas, as well as the erotic desire.
(about Gertrude & Alice)
yesterday a lovely day
we traveled to the country
bouncing along in an automobile
the sun beat directly down
feeling it on my head helps me think
we bought melons at every town
until the car was filled
ate in a small restaurant
where the fish was excellent
fed the dog under the table
we returned at evening
to sit before a fire
smelling a fire-scent found in nostrils
not in air
pleasure swells from inside
to be made visible in things
that seem less than itself
in this way life is realized
through imagination
the present moment
cannot be described
without being changed
shadings of many days
make the moment that a poem is
that is why
the butter must be tasted
and the cow seen
again and again
it takes many books to equal
one taking in and letting out
of breath
a photograph caught us
walking our dog on a cobbled street
another caught us
standing in our garden
years later we are still there
new inventions
make the moment visible
but not in the same way as poetry
here
the curve of a melon
although elliptical
can be described as
an eternal circle
in which many rounds are represented
the curve of the sky, hills
and aspects of ourselves
can thus innocently be
handled and devoured
the sun that beats directly down
is like a certain light
that spreads from your fingertips
rearranging the world
as a painted canvas does
the smoothness of the tabletop
brings you close to me
although you are lying upstairs
asleep
the grain of the wood
is the line of your eyebrows
because you are always with me
it is not true
that I go off alone to write
“Yesterday,” copyright Fran Winant, reproduced with the permission of the author. This poem first appeared in Amazon Poetry: An Anthology of Lesbian Poetry (Out & Out Books, 1975; republished as Lesbian Poetry in 1981 ), co-edited by Joan Larkin and Elly Bulkin. It was reprinted in Winant’s Dyke Jacket: Poems and Songs (Violet Press, 1976).
Biographical Sketch of Fran Winant