Poem-A-Day: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

January 5, 2014 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by 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.      Today's poem is in the public domain. About This Poem  "Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird" was first published in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse in 1917. While it was inspired by the haiku form, none of the sections in this poem are actually haiku. This poem was later published in Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).  Poetry by Stevens Selected Poems (Knopf, 2011)              Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.     Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard University and received his J.D. from New York Law School.  His major works include Ideas of Order (1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937), and Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (1942). Though now considered a major American poet, he did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of his Collected Poems (1954), just a year before his death in 1955.   Related Poems Albatross in Co. Antrim by Robin Robertson  Birds Again by Jim Harrison  Hardware Sparrows by R. T. Smith    __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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