"13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Wallace Stevens I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs. | One of the lesser known, but much beloved American modernist poets, Wallace Stevens born in 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania, gained a strong cult following from the publish of his first poems as well a reputation for vast sagacity and unique and astute style, in addition to a tendency for obscurity and musing verse which gained him an audience in students and academics alike seeking diversity and a challenge. The Connecticut raised gent was a master stylist with an extensive and well employed vocabulary, he used crafted his poems with meticulous precision as opposed to archaic patterns. Yet, all the while an zealous explorer of human nature and the concept of aesthetics through philosophy and the possibility of poetry as the ultimate combination of the chimerical and physical reality. Due to the wild abstractness and vaguely analogous tone of his poetry some considered Stevens to be a deliberately complex poet, especially with his acute scholarly and thematic complexities and ambiguities. But posthumously he was soon acknowledged as a trailblazer in the field of abstractionism in poetry with a brilliant mind for the meaningful and yet enigmatic. Always thought provoking and never dull, Steven’s death on August 2, 1955 only marked the rise of his formidable reputation. As was exemplified in the literary critic Harold Bloom’s 1975 novel regarding Stevens: “Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate”(which is no doubt the most mentally stimulating, detailed and exhaustively turgid critiques of Stevens in print) in which is stated that Wallace Stevens is "the best and most representative American poet of our time." because though he began as an executive for an insurance company, after studying at Harvard and New York Law School, in 1955 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his “Collected Poems,” and his place as a revered icon of American Literature was secured. The author of the notorious poems "Anecdote of the Jar," "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "The Idea of Order at Key West," "Sunday Morning," "The Snow Man," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." it is no surprise that for Literary Critic Bloom and so many others Stevens has become "a vital part of the American mythology." |
Wallace Stevens has written a prime example of the experimental modernist free verse. Not only does this poem defy all the structural laws and flow with an eloquence completely exclusive to to this singular poem. He doesn’t even apply a rhyme scheme or use pre-established arrangements of any kind. His composition feels mature and yet audacious it pushes for new expanses in the freedom of expression and renounces all ties to children's rhymes or trivial romantic era ballads. Instead taking inspiration from Asian artists and poets, Stevens surrounded himself with oriental art: finding beauty and energy in the balanced philosophy and terse expression. His stanzas bear a striking resemblance to the succinct elegance that is the Haiku, a Japanese tercet composed of one line consisting of five syllables followed by one of seven then another of five, both Steven’s poetry and the traditional Haiku deal mainly with the natural world and more particularly the seasons and birds. Stevens adeptly applies the asian artistry in his capture of lucid, raw imagery. Even the influence of Zen riddles( short asian meditational riddles that expand beyond the realm of logic such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?") can be found in the effect inspired by Wallace’s mysticism. Composed of stanzas of intermingling lengths, “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” has a cadence all its own. Stevens relies on word placement and correspondence for his fluency. Although it is hard to distinguish a pattern between them, the syllables of Stevens’ verses are an integral part of continuity of the poem. The breaks between lines serve to emphasize and strengthen his verse’s individual magnitude, every line draws special attention to its own personal subject, thus through brief pause and reflexion the reader is able to process and comprehend the tide of on-coming connotations and images supplied so generously by the text.
To truly fathom the complexity of Wallace Steven’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” it must be broken down into it’s individual stanzas as each is independent thought. The first stanza depicts an almost oriental image of plain ivory “Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.” here the asian “Mountains beyond mountains,” are offset by a single black bird a infinitesimally small amount of contrast which is nonetheless only the bearer the subject of the thought, which is even more microscopic it is the ebony pupil of the blackbird as it’s eye follows an unknown distraction, another darkness amid the lightness, in this instance the bird’s iris. The image is evidently an example of stark contrast, with the bird’s eye acting as the point of interest to which the eye is always drawn in a painting of the eye of a storm, captivating us with a power that is almost magnetic. Is the number twenty of any significance, it’s hard to tell, it is a strong, even number in contrast of the prime oddness of 13, but it may just be a number. This stanza is one elaborate hyperbole, used to emphasize the significance of even the minutest of details when they appear as a contrast, a dot of black against the snowy white of the mountains, a flash of movement against the stillness and immovability of those same mountains.
The next stanza doesn’t deal with with actual blackbirds, but uses them as a metaphor. From the eye of the blackbird we transition whimsically in a barren landscape into a tree full of them located impossibly in the human psyche. “I was of three minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds.” Stevens executes a satirical take on the idiom for indecision between two option or opinions, “I was of two minds,” however he elaborates it into something that is more schizophrenic than indecisive. Here, “blackbird” becomes a symbol for a thought inside the “tree” that is the human mind. The brilliance of this is using a visual image for an verbal expression that is usually left to the metaphysical.
The third stanza is a little different, a couplet as opposed to the first two tercets it evokes images of autumn as opposed to the wintry scene of the first stanza. “The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.” Stevens evolves into a flurry of movement in opposition of the stillness of his first two stanzas, his juxtaposition is perfection and the contrast it highlights is delightful. A pantomime, is a dramatic performance done through action, it is comparable to a ballet of unaccomplished dancers who have resorted to ordinary movements to tell their story, and yet every movement has meaning as it is an individual part of the story. By giving the seeming random movement of a bird buffeted by the strength of a gale meaning in the grander picture, Stevens depicts all evolutions in nature as being integral parts of the secret grander plot of the world as a whole.
The fourth stanza is instantly humorous, a bit more playful and nonsensical than it’s predecessors evolving from the whimsy of the third stanza into spontaneous and seemingly utterly unconnected satire, yet the startling imagery and abstract visuals remain. Reading Stevens’ poetry is akin to being in the company of genius, their mind whirls at a million beats a second never remaining in the same vain for long, leaving us with sharp, but indistinguishably connected snippets of a wilder and more inventive whole, only glimpses into the profound jungle that is the poet’s mind. This stanza is the first quatrain Stevens uses, and he also employs a sort of unexpected rhyming repetition, “A man and a woman are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.” The reader is instantly transported into the hopelessly awkward images of intimacy interrupted by a dark feathery head. It is clear how a man and woman can be one, love joins them, and it is sometimes even concreted by the legal documentations of marriage, yet it seems ridiculous that a bird may become a part of this conjoined existence, when he wouldn’t even be able to sign the marriage papers. Wallace Stevens then leaves his reader to contemplate what exactly he meant by “becoming one.” This could just as easily be a reference to reaching the same metaphysical plane of being to being of one opinion or a shared morality( a fate that is one and the same), it seems that Steven’s is exploring the the array of differences in interpreted meaning that can be found in the english language.
In the fifth stanza which is ironically a quintet, the second stanza theme of indecision return this time in an even more mad cap context, “I do not know which to prefer, the beauty of inflections or the beauty of innuendoes, or the blackbird whistling or just after.” The speaker illuminates his indecision as if it were between opposites and yet “inflections” and innuendos” are but too pieces in the same pie. Each has subtle differences in their uses, but they both have the general meaning: to signify something subtly whether through intonation(such as minute changes in sound) or suggestion( like verbal hints) . The blackbird whistling is metaphor for each simultaneously we hear the inflections in the bird’s song as it sings and yet we can here it reverberate through our mind after as just a hint of the real thing afterwards. The abstraction and conundrum of “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” just increases with each passing stanza, as realism fades to fantasy, and what was once clear and candid becomes allusive at best.
As the the stanzas grow longer their meanings become more convoluted, “Icicles filled the long window with barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird crossed it, to and fro. The mood traced in the shadow an indecipherable cause.” The tone becomes dark and brooding with the return of winter, we know this because of the icicle reference and overpowering darkness, this time around however, the depiction is of the season’s adverse connotations, whimsy and parody becomes morbid mystery. This is not the raw beauty of the snow-capped mountains of Stanza one, but a primal gloom. The icicles hanging in the window are not works of arts, they are weaponry, their structure and purpose primitive. While the blackbird is now pacing the air in front of them casting a dusky shadow of anxiety and fear, the dread-filled tone of the stanza can be felt through, the mood of the room which is envisioned, unkempt and somber, suddenly obscured by flitting shadows, it is full of impending catastrophe from what we are told is “an indecipherable cause.”
Again, the setting and subject shifts drastically, another quintet with the same darker tone which does not lighten, but instead becomes more realistic and metaphorical. “O thin men of Haddam, why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird walks around the feet of the women about you?” Here speaker suddenly shifts to an real-life location, the town of Haddam( in his home state of Connecticut) and addresses the people of this town, however more particularly the men. The “thin men,” these fellows are not necessarily physically twig-like it’s their spiritual well-being that’s suffering. He accuses them of a near-sighted greed, lost in hallucinations of “golden birds” while in the tangible world they are surrounded by only blackbirds. But these are birds surround the feet of beautiful women so is this reality really so horrible to want to escape it so? Stevens remarks on the idiocy of dreaming of material riches, and how they blind these men to the real beauty in this world; a glory that they could easily possess if they would only open their eyes. Stevens depicts a greed that results in unrealistic aspirations and illusions that obscure what is right in front of these small town men, the golden birds are only a delusion, while the black birds are corporeal. The women are multiple and pulchritudinous, and yet these men have not even the slightest appreciation for them. This stanza is almost a fable in miniature, comparable to Aesop in the way our speaker uses animals to illustrate a moral, “Live in the now,” or “Love the one you’re with,” are both acceptable.
The next stanza once again assumes a jovial, upbeat tone, partially serious, partially nonsensical Stevens once again uses playful humor to paint powerful contrast between his stanzas. “I know noble accents and lucid, inescapable rhythms; but I know, too, that the blackbird is involved in what I know.” Stevens now claims that his extensive literary and musical knowledge and talents, are facilitated by a blackbird, is this a reference to how he uses a blackbird as the connection between and subject in his poems, thus the blackbird incidentally becomes the mechanism which enables him to display his considerable poetic capabilities. Stevens’ poetry is no doubt compelling and intriguing, never allowing its reader to slip away for a moment, “lucid, inescapable rhythms” seems to be a cheeky reference to the speaker’s own poetry which is truly mesmerizing. Yet Stevens whether in jest or seriousness states that this astute composition would not be possible without the mundane, little blackbird of which it is so fond. So though we don’t know how serious Stevens is, we do realize that the blackbird is the key element in Stevens poetry, and it is reassuring that he is humble and down to earth enough to admit this.
The next stanza sees the return of tercet, and the continuation of the more autobiographical turn of the poem. “When the blackbird flew out of sight, it marked the edge of one of many circles.” The speaker comes to the realization that a part of what could be his inspiration, perspective or even simply visual perception was determined by a tangible variable: the blackbird. This revelation causes our speaker to admit that his horizon is not the only one and that every creature that walks the earth is possessed of an independent circle of sight, and their horizon is individual to their singular self, and as the bird passes from our reader’s line of sight, we comprehend the possibility of its passage into another man’s line of sight and thus his separate life. This stanza also symbolizes the importance of the focal point that is the center and magnetivity of how we view our lives.
The next stanza is a quatrain, and a return to the illogical and outlandish, it sounds delightful and light-hearted and yet when analyzed is as dark as its forebearers. A “bawd” is a term used for a female pimp, or someone who sells somebody else’s body and beauty for their own material gain, and “euphony” is as sound that is agreeable to the ears. “At the sight of blackbirds flying in a green light, even the bawds of euphony would cry out sharply.” The “green light” could be the first suggestion of dream-like visuals, but it seems more likely with the realistic tone that Stevens has taken on that he is simply stating that blackbird had flown into the road during a green light, thus in danger of being hit by oncoming traffic, and Stevens elaborates that this would be so great a catastrophe that even “bawds of euphony” would be horrified. So what are these “bawds of euphony”? It seems that a bawd of euphony would be any person who trades in shallow gratification, reducing all that is pleasurable in its complications to amateur thrill, that is as brief as it is hollow. This stanza seems to be an extension of the author’s eulogy to the bird that has become the crowning glory of his poem.
The sextet returns in the eleventh stanza, in a mix of whimsy and mystery along with the second coming of our poet’s home state of Connecticut. “He rode over Connecticut in a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, in that he mistook the shadow of his equipage for blackbirds.” Despite the fact that he was born into a world where automobiles were already becoming the customary method of transportation, Wallace Stevens illustrates his scenario with coaches(covered horse drawn carriages) and equipages( smaller horse carriage, accompanied by attendants) perhaps he does this deliberately to facilitate a more archaic feel and symbolize that this truth has been prevalent since even these olden days. The subject of this stanza seems to an extension of the last one, the fear of the demise of one of these precious bird, with the sharp, clear and yet fragile imagery of the apparition of a glass carriage is obviously a wishful fabrication(as surely the wheels of this carriage would broke by simply rolling along and jolting with the horse’s natural movements. The coach driver is quite suddenly possessed of doubt that the darkness beneath is carriage is truly a shadow and is momentarily terrified that it might be a bird, his worry for the bird is honest and intense oddly contradictory of complete disregard exhibited by the “thin men of Haddam”. Yet, according to Stevens the common people are coming to acknowledge the importance of these now precious birds.
Discernibly divergent from the eleventh, the twelfth stanza is only a couplet, and yet it’s meaning is more open and poignant than ever. The reader witnesses the recovery of our earlier more natural themes, and seeming abandonment of human society. “The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.” and yet is “the river” not constantly in motion? Maybe this is the point that Stevens wishes to make that as long as things are as they should be a black bird will be flying. The contrast evolutions of nature are inevitable and thus “the river” has come to be an emblem of change bringing both ends and beginnings as it flows, so in it’s natural course life goes on. The tense of the this stanza is subtly present, perhaps to symbolize that we are finally catching up with our speaker in time, or perhaps to emphasize the instantaneous quality of the natural world existing purely in the moment. So it seems that Stevens poetry has devolved into metaphors and allegories and yet it is still unexpected and shocking at every turn.
The final stanza falls back into past tense, but also for the first time engages the future tense, additionally the cold winter of past elements. “It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing and it was going to snow. The blackbird sat in the cedar-limbs.” This final thought carries all the bittersweet and fixed emotion of a farewell, it speaks of a moment that comes before it’s time, “evening all afternoon,” because don’t all good-byes come too soon? It was snowing then and it would snow again because winter as in the course of the seasons is inevitable and will come without asking. Yet, through all these tears and fears for the future, the blackbirds have returned to the trees as if it twas any old day and after all isn’t it. Doesn’t the impossible and improbable happen everyday and when we realize it it’s already gone and past, and we are once again caught up in our own mundane present. It seems to be that the point Stevens aims to prove it that time will be time and changes will come to pass the seasons will cycle as they tend to do, we will feel greed and love, and time will both crawl and flash, but it will never halt entirely and somethings will never change no matter how much time passes and even if the blackbirds became as important as Stevens dictates them to be, they would still sit on cedar-limbs like any old bird, and through all this the only thing we as humans are capable of doing is living in the moment and enjoying what we have. Through every stanza Steven’s proves himself a master and prankster, capable of both the silly and serious, ordinary and wondrous he uses something natural and everyday to take his reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through the analogies and the consequences and importance of the everyday things as regular as birds and precious as beautiful women.
Shifting between ambiguous and spiritual, philosophical and prosaic, Wallace Steven’s poetry has a magnitude that is completely unique and original. “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” is iconic of Stevens’ modernist style full of a reverence of the natural world, and beauty not just in the untamed wilderness, but also if not even more so in the urbanization world. The use of birds as a natural image contrast between rural splendor and the everyday urban lifestyle, is characteristic of Stevens, he also uses it in his popular poem “Sunday Morning,” to which it bears a striking similarity. Whether it is an eulogy to pigeons at the close of the “Sunday Morning,” or the continuing tribute to blackbirds throughout this poem, Stevens expresses an appreciation of all nature’s creatures no matter where they dwell. He deems the difference between the exotic and domestic to be an mentally created one. His use of sound and syllabic emphasis is consummate, and evokes his tone with all the style and effectiveness of his visual settings which are constantly evolving like one strange abstract movie through the seasons, from civilization to countryside, from roads to carriages, and even small town, Connecticut. All the austere beauty and quaint traditions of Stevens rural New England wilderness and natural places contrasted with the all nefarious nature and greed of it’s consumer ruled society are captured within Stevens poem. Universal and expansive ideas, such as time, fear, sin and morality are contrasted with the most ordinary and minute of details such as the feet of beautiful women, blackbirds and shadows under carriages. Juxtaposition and unique structural composition are what make Stevens so incredible, although rhyme schemes are absent and format is abandoned for independent expression, he still sounds both rhythmic and poised. A poet who didn’t gain began his literary career till the release of his first anthology, “Harmonium” in 1923 when Stevens was 44, it contained the second release of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" which been first published in a literary journal in six years earlier. Even with his delayed start, Stevens went on to have a extensive and illustrious career in literature, and in 1955 the year of his death he was awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”.