Tender Buttons contained no forward or introduction when first published. This was an unusual and unique move at the time. It begins, instead, by skipping right to the first section of the work, entitled "Objects." The section contains 58 poems of varying length. Some are run a single sentence, such as "Peeled Pencil, Choke," whereas others are multiple paragraphs, the longest of which is "the substance in a cushion." Each poem is a brief meditation on the titular object in question. Yet Stein does not offer a straightforward analysis, rather subverting grammatical and linguistic standards and creating her own syntax. Sentences do not necessarily make immediate sense, for example, "all this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling," from the section's first poem. By toying with basic linguistic structure, Stein is inviting the reader to also interrogate and expand their conceptions of the objects she references. A box is not just a place to put things, but "a white way of being round in something suggesting a pin and it is disappointing."
The section is entitled "Food." On the first page it lists all of the poems that will be contained within the section, of which there are 39. The subject of each poem roughly relates to food, with the notable exceptions of "Tail" and "End of Summer." As in "Objects" the poems are of varying length, however the food poems are longer on average. The first poem of the section, "Roastbeef," runs over four pages. As with the section before, Stein abstrusely presents her subject matter with nonsensical sentence structure and word combinations. For example breakfast is portrayed as "anything that is decent, anything that is present, a calm and a cook and more singularily still a shelter, all these show the need of clamor." Likewise, this section contains some of the work's most whimsical wordplay. Butter reads, for example, "boom in boom in, butter. Leave a grain and show it, show it." It has been suggested that Stein's section on food is an attempt to distort the societally feminized practice of food preparation and house-keeping. As a famously independent and individualistic figure, Stein would have opposed this association, and could potentially try to distort such connotations in Tender Buttons.
The final section is a singular poem entitled "Rooms." Despite its title, the section does not contain a rumination on rooms or domestic space. It is rather an assemblage of paragraphs covering such topics as religion, education, homosexuality, and, somehow, a Chinaman. It is in this section that some of Stein's references to homosexuality can be most obviously parsed. For example, she writes, "the sister was not a mister. Was this a surprise. It was" and further, "replacing a casual acquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son." By employing this obscure style, Stein was afforded latitude to reference topics such as lesbianism and homosexuality that would have been otherwise taboo at the time. Tender Buttons ends as bizarrely as it begins, with the line, "the care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain."
