Perspectives on a perspective
the genius of Wallace Stevens on similarity, contrast, & multiplicity in organic form
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
BY WALLCE STEVENS (1917)1
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,  Â
The only moving thing  Â
Was the eye of the blackbird.  Â
II
I was of three minds,  Â
Like a tree  Â
In which there are three blackbirds.  Â
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.  Â
It was a small part of the pantomime.  Â
IV
A man and a woman  Â
Are one.  Â
A man and a woman and a blackbird  Â
Are one.  Â
V
I do not know which to prefer,  Â
The beauty of inflections  Â
Or the beauty of innuendoes,  Â
The blackbird whistling  Â
Or just after.  Â
VI
Icicles filled the long window  Â
With barbaric glass.  Â
The shadow of the blackbird  Â
Crossed it, to and fro.  Â
The mood  Â
Traced in the shadow  Â
An indecipherable cause.  Â
VII
O thin men of Haddam,  Â
Why do you imagine golden birds?  Â
Do you not see how the blackbird  Â
Walks around the feet  Â
Of the women about you?  Â
VIII
I know noble accents  Â
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;Â Â Â
But I know, too,  Â
That the blackbird is involved  Â
In what I know.  Â
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,  Â
It marked the edge  Â
Of one of many circles.  Â
X
At the sight of blackbirds  Â
Flying in a green light,  Â
Even the bawds of euphony  Â
Would cry out sharply.  Â
XI
He rode over Connecticut  Â
In a glass coach.  Â
Once, a fear pierced him,  Â
In that he mistook  Â
The shadow of his equipage  Â
For blackbirds.  Â
XII
The river is moving.  Â
The blackbird must be flying.  Â
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.  Â
It was snowing  Â
And it was going to snow.  Â
The blackbird sat  Â
In the cedar-limbs.
Pau
Huelo Hale, Paumalu 2022
Stevens, in his essay "Three Academic Pieces" (1947), stated: "The accuracy of accurate letters is an accuracy with respect to the structure of reality . . . Thus, if we desire to formulate an accurate theory of poetry, we find it necessary to examine the structure of reality, because reality is the central reference for poetry. By way of accomplishing this, suppose we examine one of the significant components of the structure of reality — that is to say, the resemblance between things."