"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - Wallace Stevens

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Words:

  • Pantomime: a copy of something
  • Haddam: town in CT
  • “With barbaric glass.”
  • Innuendo: an allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one.
  • Euphony: the quality of being pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words.
  • The desire for something else, not appreciating what one has
  • Snow, winter -  journey, travel
  • Blackbird = God?
    • Religious/holy trinity - “three minds,” “three blackbirds” (II)
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Imagery

  • “looking at a blackbird’
    • Flying - freedom
    • Blackbird = ominous, foreboding?
      • Instead of golden - what if there’s someone better (relationships)
  • Relationship between people and nature
    • Described in multiple sensory details → only “looking”?
  • About perspective? - sight 
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IV

  • Unity in all things?
  • All about perspective, depending on the perspective of the viewer
    1. Man and women = 1 from bird
    2. Not 1 but look like they’re one 
  • “Barbaric glass”
    • Icicles blocking window - barbaric because it’s getting in the way
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V

  • “Beauty of innuendos”
    • Inflections: more sudden, immediacy 
    • Innuendos: secondary 
  • Beautifully fleeting
  • “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting”
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