ModPoMinute #54: On Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Al Filreis and Anna Safford chat in the Kelly Writers House's garden about the first section of Wallace Stevens's famous "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
Find a link to the full text of Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Enroll anytime in "ModPo," a free, open, online course on Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, at modpo.org.

[@John-vx9qy]

I never understood this poem . This ModpoMinute helped me alot

[@lalallange5890]

I love this poem. Not a clue what it is has ever meant. Thank you ! Great channel.

[@PedroArvy]

It is not about the eye. It is about perception. Why do you look at the mountains when the blackbird is in front of you? What is immediately in your perception, the mountains or the foreground? This is the question of this poem. Transposition. It is a criticism of what you find relevant and why you find it so.

[@dellamonk6792]

Cool!

[@peterzee1928]

Most birds cannot move their eyes much, right? That's why they have to keep moving their heads instead. I guess that adds yet another twist to that great line, putting some extra emphasis on the STILLNESS of the landscape - since the movement of the blackbird's eye must have been REAL SMALL ;)