In her own words...
"Stain"
1995
Many years ago today
I took a husband tenderly
This simple human gentle act
Seen as a hard decisive fact
By all who dote on category
Did stain my work indelibly
I don't know why that is
For it has not stained his.
About this work
This is an unpublished poem that was first quoted by Michael Kimmelman in “Interwoven Destinies As Artist and Wife,” The New York Times, August 24, 1995, and later by Joy Press in her obituary, "Dorothea Tanning dies at 101," Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2012.