I have decided to write about Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Since I have only the poem and Norton's notes, I'm risking getting everything about it "wrong." And my biggest critic, our own Dr. Dyer really likes this poem, if my impression is correct. Basically, I might be getting into trouble.
At any rate, "Thirteen Ways" has changed the way I look at blackbirds. At first, I had the image of large carnivorous glossy black birds that walk around on giant feet, but then I remembered that blackbirds are not anything like Poe's raven . . . they are a smaller bird. The one I am most familiar with is the red winged blackbird, which is the biggest type I have ever seen. Blackbirds do not "caw." They are actually of the larger songbirds.
Yet, being glossy black black, the blackbird is still associated with the often foreboding impression shared by many dark animals in our culture: the raven, the rat, the panther, black horses, black dogs, black cats. And so it also takes a mysterious and dark place in Steven's poem.
Steven's chooses the number 13 for a reason. None of the most vivid words in the poem are not necessarily "bright" or "cheery." "Pantomime" in way 3 describes silence more than comedy. "Innuendoes" in way 5 refers to derogatory or sly implications. The mood and shadow in way 6 make "An indecipherable cause." "Haddam" in way 7 is a Connecticut city that I suspect rhymes with the Sodom of Genesis. "Bawds" would "cry out sharply" in way 10 to a blackbird in green light. "He" who rode over Connecticut in way 11 was "pierced" by fear. The poem does not by any means lift the popular suspicious image of the blackbird. Stevens has deepened the mystery and the power of the species.
The song that plays 'til I'm dead.
4 comments:
Berty -
There is a 20th Century poetry class in the fall that I would take if I liked poetry more. My reason for telling you about it is that Wallace Stevens' is one of the authors that will be focused on in the course. If I felt more confident in the area of poetry (and didn't hate reading 80% of the poetry I read) I would take the class.
That said, I will have to go read Stevens' poem and see if your reading is right. It likely is (you are usually quite insightful in your readings of literature), but your thoughts have made me interested in the poem itself. Thanks for posting about it.
-Dianna
PS: I'm planning on being back in Sioux Falls for your graduation. We must do lunch again!
The song of the red wing blackbird has a happy effect on me. In colorado, when I was a youngster, the call would accompany me at play in our big country yard and fields. In more recent times, it has accompanied times in the garden or pleasant walks.
By the way, we also have a lot of 'crows' or 'ravens' around during the winter. I dislike their call and consider them a nuisance. However, they do a good job of cleaning the road kill . . .
I had no idea that I could even like this poem, and now you've done it. You've opened my eyes and I have officially thought about something in a new light.
That being said, I must also add that your reading of this was a bit... thorough... and I liked it.
I hadn't really thought about WHY Stevens would write about black birds, and I'd never thought that he would try to break a stereotype (or intensify it, deepen it, whatever it) in doing so.
I still think they're mostly eerie, and I still don't get what all the stanzas mean (What the heck does it mean that "A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one" ???), but it makes me think, and I think that's my point. Thanks. :)
I read your follow up to this post before I read this original one. Puts an interesting spin on things. When I first read the poem, I also was picturing a dark, mysterious creature. I'm glad you pointed out that this is not the case... even though Stevens would allow us to continue in that vein.
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