Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2013 19:04:35 GMT -5
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
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.
Sometimes light takes the form of a blackbird, yes. Light is equal to black in a mathematics.
I always liked the poem though I couldn't explain why. Today I've realized the reason of it. I googled more and found the following quotations from Wallace Stevens:
“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”
“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”
“Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.”
"The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”
“in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.”
“A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.”
“God and the imagination are one.”
Hi 'rish
Wallace Stevens has been one of my favorite poets since the 80's.
A few more of his insights through poetry and essay:
"The book of moonlight is not written yet- The Comedian as the Letter C (1923)
"The natives of the rain are rainy men."
"The plum survives its poems."
"Yet the quotidian saps philosophers."
"We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues."
"We say God and imagination are one...How high that highest candle lights the dark."
"There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain."
"A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman."
"In the world of words,
The imagination is one of the forces of nature."
"The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought rises...
A gold feathered bird
Sings in the palm. -Of Mere Being (1957)
"The humble are they that move the world with the lure of the real in their hearts."
"Poetry is a search for the inexplicable."
"They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne." ;D
