Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1917

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

How to See

Stevens teaches the reader 13 ways to look at a blackbird, so, in essence, he outlines how to see or perceive the world. Perception involves specifics, and Stevens provides precise images. His speaker provides an exact count of the mountains and their condition—“twenty mountains” (Line 1). The speaker looks carefully and notices that “[t]he only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird” (3). Sight requires attentive observation, and it also necessitates context. The blackbird doesn’t exist in a vacuum but among other things—it’s “whirled in the autumn winds” (Line 7), pacing near “barbaric glass” (Line 19), or marking the edges of “one of many circles” (Line 37). The blackbird participates in the world, and to see it, the speaker has to be aware of the world.

The “thin men of Haddam” (Line 25) serve as a reminder of how not to see the world. The men don’t look at the blackbird, nor do the men pay much attention to the women around them. They’re unaware of their environment because they are too preoccupied with “imagin[ing] golden birds” (Line 26). Imagination is crucial, but the thin men’s imaginations are corrupt. Their imaginations don’t deepen reality but perpetuate the worst parts of it. They’re in a capitalist context (Haddam, despite its biblical sound, is a town in Connecticut in the US), and they’re dreaming of a gaudy commodity (the golden birds). As thin men, not in body but in spirit, they lack the robust imagination to inject their surroundings with meaningful perceptions.

Sometimes, Stevens’s poem suggests, seeing doesn’t involve sight. In Section 5, the speaker hears inflections, innuendoes, and the whistling blackbirds. The speaker also hears “noble accents” (Line 30), “lucid, inescapable rhythms” (Line 31), and “the bawds of euphony” (Line 40). The development of true sight or perception seems to involve the awareness of multiple senses.

The Fluidity of Reality

Part of what makes the world so hard to perceive or comprehend is its changeability. Neither the world nor the blackbird stay the same. They are inevitably in flux, and the blackbird reinforces the fluidity of reality. In the poem’s title, it’s not “the” blackbird but “a” blackbird. The indefinite article signals fluidity—the blackbird perceived could be any number of blackbirds. There are 13 sections, and each section cites a blackbird or a group of blackbirds. The blackbirds seem to move between multiple realities. Sometimes, the blackbird is by itself; other times, it has company. The speaker doesn’t present the blackbird as restrained—it’s free. It can join a “man and a woman” and become “one” with them (Lines 11-12) or it can sit in “the cedar-limbs” (Line 54). The blackbird that’s with the man and woman isn’t necessarily the same blackbird marking the circle’s edge, or moving with the river. The blackbird possesses a flexible identity.

The world the blackbird inhabits is also fluid. People can become other things. The speaker compares themselves to “a tree / In which there are three blackbirds” (Line 6). Like the man and woman in Section 4, the speaker has permeable boundaries. The moving river and flying blackbird in Section 12 further the link between the mobility of the bird and its environment. Time, too, is porous when it’s “evening all afternoon” (Line 50). Thus, one time of day absorbs another. The speaker states, “It was snowing / And it was going to snow” (Lines 51-52). The speaker scrambles the past, present, and future. It snowed before, and it was supposed to snow. Alternately, it snowed already, and at the same time, it will snow again. Maybe it’s snowing now, but the fluidity of “was” makes it difficult to determine the actual current weather conditions, just as it’s difficult to determine where the ever-present blackbird is in time and space.

The Mystery of the World

All this flux and flow has a clear effect: As the blackbird and the universe move and change, the bird and the world develop a sense of mystery. The speaker heeds the mystery of the world when they note the “indecipherable cause” (Line 24) of the blackbird’s shadow. The reasons and motivations for the blackbird’s behavior remain obscure because the world is often unknowable. Due to its fluidity, even precise images of the world fail to account for all that goes on within it. Put in conversation with the theme of mystery, learning how to see doesn’t mean that the speaker solves the mystery or uncovers the inner workings of the blackbird and the world—instead, learning how to see means learning how to document the puzzling, enigmatic universe and blackbird.

Mysteries dominate the poem. The title is a mystery, as the reader might wonder why Stevens landed on 13 ways and not 14, 20, or 33 ways. Neither Stevens nor his speaker explains why there are 13 ways to see a blackbird—it remains a mystery. As mystery eludes understanding, the poem takes on an unsettling atmosphere. Stevens reinforces the eerie theme of mystery with chilling images. The speaker states, “The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird” (Lines 2-3). The active eye juxtaposes the still blackbird, creating a sinister portrait. The sharp icicles and “barbaric glass” (Line 19) reinforce the macabre atmosphere, and the repetition of shadow advances the unnerving environment. Stevens makes the theme explicit with the man in “a glass coach” (43). When the man thinks he sees the shadow of blackbirds, “a fear pierce[s] him” (44). The world and the blackbird can be frightening in how unknowable they are.