Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
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.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 234 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | abc xde xf gGcG haxbh ixcixix fecxj xxjxi klx ekdd xxxxle bb xbixx |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,363 |
Words | 261 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 2, 4, 5, 7, 5, 5, 3, 4, 6, 2, 5 |
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"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/37924/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird>.
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