Capitalization
In Tender Buttons, Stein refrains from defining objects in any concrete sense. She does not depict the imagery of a "way lay vegetable" or "dirt and not copper." This is not to suggest that Tender Buttons is a work without imagery. Instead, Stein's imagery is reflected in the construction and foundation of the text itself. As a work of mixed medium and genre, the imagery in this case is physical and visual. The imagery is on the page in a literal sense, not just within the works. Take, for example, Stein's use of capitalization throughout the work. Each title is all-capitalized, including the list of all the titles at the start of "Food." Despite this, none of the actual poetic content features extensive capitalization. By doing this, Stein creates a divergence between the titles and their corresponding poems. The poems often do not relate to their titles at all, and this is reflected in Stein's variegated use of capitalization.
Paragraph Breaks
Tender Buttons visually appears like a choppy text. There are frequent paragraph breaks, often between two single lines of poetry. For example, despite containing only 7 lines, the poem "Single Fish" contains 5 distinct paragraph breaks. In doing this, Stein is able to represent very different thoughts and themes in consecutive sentences. Paragraph breaks afford her the freedom to break from linear representations. An exemplar of this is found again in "Single Fish" in the lines "Every way oakly, please prune it near. It is found / It is not the same." Two non-connected thoughts are represented but through the paragraph break, they are allowed to remain independent. In this sense, Stein's use of the physical imagery of paragraph breaks is also indicative of her greater style as a writer.
The Imagery of a Salad
It would be remiss to describe the imagery of Tender Buttons without attempting to approach the ways in which Stein does actually create imagery solely through her words. It is not a straightforward pursuit, or imagery at all in the conventional sense. Let's look at Stein's poem "Salad" contained within the "Food" section. The poem features one-line: "It is a winning cake." It does not include any content actually describing what the salad is but rather what it is not. The salad is described through a negative definition. As with much of Tender Buttons, this is confusing imagery. One thinks more of the cake than of the titular salad. One is forced to imagine for themselves what a "winning cake" could possibly be. It is not conventional imagery but Tender Buttons is nothing if not unconventional.
Rooms
The last section of the work is titled "Rooms." Again, it is not a precise, or even sensical, rendering of a room. Yet in Stein's own style, there is imagery to be found and formulated. She begins the section by writing "act as if there is no use in a centre." She continues to speak of borders, angles and of more centers. Through this, Stein is speaking of the abstract geometry of the room. It has dimensions, but Stein refrains from describing them directly. She continues to say, "any force which is bestowed on a floor shows rubbing." In a Stein translation, that it to say that the floor is scuffed and scratched. The text then weaves through various descriptions of objects and events which do not relate at all to the room before returning to say "a curtain, a curtain which is fastened discloses mourning." Here Stein puns upon the similarity between mourning and morning. This exemplifies Stein's indirect image-crafting. She does not plainly say what exists, she invites the reader to imagine what they believe exists.
