Wallace Stevens

[twelveoone]

When I hear people talk about "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." superimposed on it is a mental image of Charlie Manson preaching about the coming race war because the Beatles sent him a message on the White Album. It's there, "take these broken wings and learn to fly, blackbird fly...". Unfair, maybe. I have a great amount of trouble with Stevens, I can't sit down with him, I never understood why. What grand fault of my own do I harbour? I went looking, a quest for understanding...

Wally vs Willy


Dan Schneider makes a case for Stevens being greater than Shakespeare.OK Dan, I see it, yes, Willy wrote some loser sonnets and Wally was consistent, but Shakespeare had great some characters, and often he was funny.


This link for the Heath Online
Instructor's Guideseems to be cut off from from Houghton Mifflin's site, but has some interesting entries, that I hope some may be of use to somebody.


Stevens Here:

Contributing Editor: Linda W. Wagner-Martin writes: Beginning with the poems by Stevens might make reading T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams much easier...so why do I, who like Eliot, WCW and at least respect Frost (snowy old bastard), have so much trouble with Stevens and can not take him seriously?

Wait, I see the characters, and Frost and Williams can be funny. Eliot can be downright uproarious. Ape necked Sweeney and whatnot.

From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_Ice_Cream
...things that have their origin in the imagination or in the emotions very often take on a form that is ambiguous or uncertain. It is not possible to attach a single, rational meaning to such things without destroying the imaginative or emotional ambiguity or uncertainty that is inherent in them and that is why poets do not like to explain. That the meanings given by others are sometimes meanings not intended by the poet or that were never present in his mind does not impair them as meanings.

Well it seems I arrived full circle. Even though when I am serious this is the philosopy I take when I write, and yes I spent six weeks writing three lines so it they could be looked at five different ways...I laughed, to myself maybe...but I laughed.

From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens

Miller summarizes Stevens's position: "Though this dissolving of the self is in one way the end of everything, in another way it is the happy liberation. There are only two entities left now that the gods are dead: man and nature, subject and object. ( aha - the verb, maybe it was the lack of the verb, the adverb, I thought) Nature is the physical world, visible, audible, tangible, present to all the senses, and man is consciousness, the nothing which receives nature and transforms it into something unreal...

Sounds a little like Camus, who cometh from Nietzsche (both of whom had their comedic moments).

One should not invite another into looking into the abyss, without a little comedic relief - the laugh of the damned - and Wally just never struck me as funny.

Ah me, I'm damned, at least around here, with my failure to understand.

 

[normal jean]

okay, I'll bite.

If Stevens is not actually speaking of blackbirds, what is he referring to?

I would not say that you have any type of fault by not being able to "sit down" with Stevens. I have the same problem with Emily Dickenson; I find her basically morose and yes, I find Missy Em, terribly boring. People like what they like, what I think your problem is, if it is indeed, a problem, is that those whom you cannot sit down with are not complex enough for you. They do not challenge your brain enough. You like riddles and it seems to me, you want, or expect more from poetry than the way Stevens writes...maybe, maybe not

also, I find it fascinating, your reference to Charlie Manson. I am also sure it won't shock anyone here to know I kept a scrapbook on serial killers, though not Manson because he was a bit before my time. I just wasn't reading news papers when I was 8 years old.

What intrigues me is the psychology behind the motivations of those who do or inspire such heinous acts. I think I wanted to be a profiler before that term was ever coined....

anyway, your thoughts and your thought processes are always such a wonderful treat to me, I enjoy you so much.

Oh yes, and it strikes me as sort of funny that anyone would think that reading Wallace Stevens would make reading Eliot, or anyone else, for that matter easier. I have never had a problem reading Eliot, he and Walt Whitman are my favorites.... I guess you could attribute my garden inspired verse to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, he truly inspires me to just let go with my nature poems.

anyway, thanks for the intriguing read on this thread, You give me so much to think about. Lol, are you donating your brain to science when the time comes?



NJ

 

[Guest]

..........

 

[normal jean]

I don't know about Stevens and his blackbirds, or what twelveoone is suggesting, though I could easily stretch and see something else. After all, my "Clever Like a Crow" isn't really about crows.

​

hello Darling

I remembered that poem of yours. You are such a luscious poet, you tease and teach, at the same time. I also have a crow poem, that isn't really about a crow, if I can find it, and if 1201 doesnt mind, I will post it here. hmm, lemme see where I buried that rascal, lol....


crow bait

I heard that the crow did cry
all day pacing the roadside
lamenting the path of sunlight
his head bobbing side to side.

Crow and good friend garter snake
had shared information on berry locations
and the death of said snake
was the only time crow ever cried.

I doubt I will forget
the grate of his caw on my ears,
as crow could only voice displeasure
his sadness, his loss, in wails and squawks

of how can I ever carry on, carry on?

~~~

if I remember correctly, I got about 20 comments on this one, it was sort of a puzzle, it is about friendship and how friends can allow their relationships to deteriorate sometimes, to the point of being carrion but, mostly, people didn't like, or couldn't understand my use of "did" in the first line....

yep, I know, me and my road kill poems, but lotsa people here write about roadkill, don't they?

 

[twelveoone]

okay, I'll bite.

If Stevens is not actually speaking of blackbirds, what is he referring to?

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.

In #13 he is oviously talking about Senna Jawa, lamanting the fact the Muse shit on his windowsill, and stole all his descriptors.

Wally for the most part is not looking at blackbirds as blackbirds but useing them as a poetic convention. When he wrote this it was a revolutionary piece, why it became part of the literary canon escapes me.

Now we have some interesting psychology going on in II, IV, and VII. V is strange too. What really, do blackbirds (as blackbirds) have to do with any of these scenes. Blackbirds do not walk around the feet of women, dark gray pigeons maybe- looking for a meal. Is there a sexual message of some sort with VII, note VIII also, who knows, Wally leaves it up to you.

Now look at II and IV, really? we have to redefine blackbird s for it to make any sense. This is fine, this is poetry. POETRY IS NOT LOGICAL, caveat emptor.

 

[twelveoone]

hello Darling

I remembered that poem of yours. You are such a luscious poet, you tease and teach, at the same time. I also have a crow poem, that isn't really about a crow, if I can find it, and if 1201 doesnt mind, I will post it here. hmm, lemme see where I buried that rascal, lol....


crow bait

I heard that the crow did cry
all day pacing the roadside
lamenting the path of sunlight
his head bobbing side to side.

Crow and good friend garter snake
had shared information on berry locations
and the death of said snake
was the only time crow ever cried.

I doubt I will forget
the grate of his caw on my ears,
as crow could only voice displeasure
his sadness, his loss, in wails and squawks

of how can I ever carry on, carry on?

~~~

if I remember correctly, I got about 20 comments on this one, it was sort of a puzzle, it is about friendship and how friends can allow their relationships to deteriorate sometimes, to the point of being carrion but, mostly, people didn't like, or couldn't understand my use of "did" in the first line....

yep, I know, me and my road kill poems, but lotsa people here write about roadkill, don't they?

I like, this is a relatively conventional use of poetry (and fables). A bit of a sick pun at the end - which I like also.

 

[twelveoone]

I don't know about Stevens and his blackbirds, or what twelveoone is suggesting, though I could easily stretch and see something else. After all, my "Clever Like a Crow" isn't really about crows.

​

sorry I missed it - a fiver

 

[champagne1982]

I
<snip>
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?
<snip> Blackbirds do not walk around the feet of women, dark gray pigeons maybe- looking for a meal. Is there a sexual message of some sort with VII, note VIII also, who knows, Wally leaves it up to you.<snip>

I think the blackbirds in this context can easily become the black hems of bhurkas... Being literal is not a requirement of reading and writing poetry.

 

[Epmd607]

A buddy of mine says he's talking about identity

Nate Pritts mentions this poem in his essay on overcoming identity in poetry http://puellamea.com/issue1/natepritts.html

He says the different views on the blackbird are basically Stevens trying to express his own identity in an organic and processual way, without the bludegeon of "I feel this, I hate that".


I personally love WC. You can read Harmonium like a book. Which might not make sense, but after reading a bunch of books of poetry that are basically collections, reading Harmonium has that cohesiveness similar to a Langston Hughes or Yeats book.

 

[normal jean]

Nate Pritts mentions this poem in his essay on overcoming identity in poetry http://puellamea.com/issue1/natepritts.html

He says the different views on the blackbird are basically Stevens trying to express his own identity in an organic and processual way, without the bludegeon of "I feel this, I hate that".


I personally love WC. You can read Harmonium like a book. Which might not make sense, but after reading a bunch of books of poetry that are basically collections, reading Harmonium has that cohesiveness similar to a Langston Hughes or Yeats book.

hi Epmd

Thank you for your take on this poet and his poem. I knew when 1201 posted his theory, that this could very well be a "good and decent" conversation about poetry. Such a delight to see another talented poet jump in with his own ideas and suggestions for reading and not just some "hawt" or "rawking" B.S. that really has little to do with poetry.

I intend to check it out.



NJ

 

[twelveoone]

Nate Pritts mentions this poem in his essay on overcoming identity in poetry http://puellamea.com/issue1/natepritts.html

He says the different views on the blackbird are basically Stevens trying to express his own identity in an organic and processual way, without the bludegeon of "I feel this, I hate that".


I personally love WC. You can read Harmonium like a book. Which might not make sense, but after reading a bunch of books of poetry that are basically collections, reading Harmonium has that cohesiveness similar to a Langston Hughes or Yeats book.

I think the blackbirds in this context can easily become the black hems of bhurkas... Being literal is not a requirement of reading and writing poetry.

very,very good
there is text, things behind the text, and things called into the text.

kind of supports what I said in the first place, these are not blackbirds (as feathered chirpers) that he is looking at, except champ being literal probably is more of an impediment to reading and writing poetry

so, so much for the value judgement Truth married to the the value judgement Beauty, eh?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

With all due respect . . .

I am shocked at the basic premise that Wallace Stevens and The Bard share much more than a common written medium and language.

On NPR a few years back, I happened to hear a tape of Stevens reading one of his works. It might have been this one, but I do not recall. What struck me most was the utter monotone he used, as though he were having the reading dragged from his dead body across his larynx and out of his mouth. He could not have been any less enthused.

They also mentioned a time where he argued with Robert Frost. Stevens attacked with, "the problem with you, Frost, is that you write about stuff." Frost retorted with, "the problem with you, Stevens, is that you write about bric-a-brac." In my point system, touche. Apparently, Stevens best abilities to deal with his literary contemporaries are best described by the story of the time he took a swing at Hemingway. Stevens did tag the old drunk, breaking his, Stevens', hand. They declined to say what Hemingway's response was, but I imagine none was required after that.

Just my $.02.

 

[annaswirls]

Being literal is not a requirement of reading and writing poetry.

amen sister!
I might say it is (on it's good days) quite the opposite