The Full Text of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
I
1Among twenty snowy mountains,
2The only moving thing
3Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
4I was of three minds,
5Like a tree
6In which there are three blackbirds.
III
7The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
8It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
9A man and a woman
10Are one.
11A man and a woman and a blackbird
12Are one.
V
13I do not know which to prefer,
14The beauty of inflections
15Or the beauty of innuendoes,
16The blackbird whistling
17Or just after.
VI
18Icicles filled the long window
19With barbaric glass.
20The shadow of the blackbird
21Crossed it, to and fro.
22The mood
23Traced in the shadow
24An indecipherable cause.
VII
25O thin men of Haddam,
26Why do you imagine golden birds?
27Do you not see how the blackbird
28Walks around the feet
29Of the women about you?
VIII
30I know noble accents
31And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
32But I know, too,
33That the blackbird is involved
34In what I know.
IX
35When the blackbird flew out of sight,
36It marked the edge
37Of one of many circles.
X
38At the sight of blackbirds
39Flying in a green light,
40Even the bawds of euphony
41Would cry out sharply.
XI
42He rode over Connecticut
43In a glass coach.
44Once, a fear pierced him,
45In that he mistook
46The shadow of his equipage
47For blackbirds.
XII
48The river is moving.
49The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
50It was evening all afternoon.
51It was snowing
52And it was going to snow.
53The blackbird sat
54In the cedar-limbs.
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Introduction
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"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" was written by one of America's most celebrated 20th-century poets, Wallace Stevens. The poem was published in Stevens's classic debut collection, Harmonium (1923), and was described by the poet as thirteen different "sensations." These "sensations" are almost like short, individual poems, each of which references a blackbird in some way. As the poem's title suggests, these fragments feature different perspectives, with the bird taking on many disparate meanings as the poem unfolds. The poem is more about evoking certain feelings in the reader than in making any particular argument about birds. Overall, though, the poem does seem to suggest that reality is always a matter of perspective—that each person looks at and understands the world in their own way.
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Summary
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A vast, snow-capped mountain range looked completely still, but one thing was moving: a blackbird's eye.
My mind was split three ways, like the presence of three blackbirds in a tree.
The autumn wind spins the blackbird through the air—and this is just one small part of the show.
A man and woman are a unified whole. And a man, woman, and blackbird are also a unified whole.
I don't know if I prefer the beauty of melodies or the way they take on meaning in the mind. In other words, birdsong or the silence that follows.
The large window was full of spiky icicles, like frightening glass. A blackbird's shadow crossed it repeatedly. Somehow, this shadow caused a sense of foreboding.
Why do you, thin men from Haddam in Connecticut, waste your time daydreaming about golden birds, when you could be noticing the real blackbirds right in front of you—the ones walking around the women's feet.
I know about the control of words through accents and rhythms. But I also know that the blackbird is part of my knowledge too.
When the blackbird flew far away, it demonstrated the end of a range of vision—just one of many perspectives on the world.
Even people that like cheap, trite poetry would be taken aback if they saw blackbirds flying in green light.
A man was riding through Connecticut in a glass coach. One time, he was afraid—he thought the shadow of his carriage was a flock of blackbirds.
The river is flowing, and this means that the blackbird must have taken flight.
All afternoon it was dark. It had been snowing and showed no sign of letting up. The blackbird was at rest in the tree.
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Themes
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Perspective, Subjectivity, and Reality
As its title suggests, this poem is about different ways of perceiving the world—and more specifically, of course, a blackbird. Stevens himself called this poem a group of “sensations”: fleeting experiences that don’t necessarily have an obvious meaning. Divided into thirteen short sections, the poem presents the titular animal from multiple viewpoints. Some of these are contradictory, suggesting that there is no single correct way of seeing the world. Instead, the poem implies that reality is subjective and can be defined by whoever's looking at it.
The poem’s first section presents a natural scene in which the only moving thing “among twenty snowy mountains” is the eye of a blackbird. This vantage point is simultaneously vast and tiny, the mountains representing nature at its most epic and the blackbird’s eye offering something much more specific. Already, then, the poem is setting up different ways of looking at the world, here zoomed-in (detailed) and zoomed-out (general). The “eye” of the blackbird might be a play on the “I” pronoun—that is, the person that each person feels themself to be. It is through this “I” that people perceive the world—thus referencing the multiple ways of “looking at” not just blackbirds, but anything. A useful word for this idea is subjectivity—when you, the subject, read the poem, the experience will be different from someone else’s.
This subjectivity is then developed by the poem’s other sections. In the third, for example, the blackbird is just one interconnected part of nature’s “pantomime” (pantomimes are performances in which meaning is created through movement). A pantomime, just like the vision of a blackbird on the wind, can mean different things to different people. In the seventh section, blackbirds are presented as part of tangible reality (as opposed to something invented by the mind), whereas in the eleventh section they represent paranoia and fear: “Once, a fear pierced him, / In that he mistook / The shadow of his equipage / For blackbirds.” In the seventh stanza, then, blackbirds prove reality, while in the eleventh they create a fictional threat.
Neither perspective is the right one, and their difference highlights that there is no one “way of looking” at anything. In other words, the blackbird can mean pretty much anything to anyone depending on the situation. This, then, presents truth not as one singular entity—but as a whole range of possibilities, all held in a kind of irresolvable tension.
The poem sometimes even lapses into statements that logically can’t be true. This would seem to support the poem’s inherent belief that there is no singular, true reality. This use of intentional nonsense is best exemplified by lines 11 and 12—“A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one”—and line 50’s “It was evening all afternoon.” The inability of these lines to make literal sense means the reader has to bring their own subjective understanding to them, foregrounding the way that subjectivity itself is key to the process of meaning-making in the first place.
The poem ends by essentially returning to where it began, repositioning the blackbird in a straight-up natural image. The blackbird in the tree is at rest after the somewhat wild journey that the poem has been on, through different perspectives and feelings. The simplicity of this image seems to give the reader space to take note of all that has come before—that is, the closing image is one that doesn’t really include a subject. But, given what’s come before, this looks like an intentionally mischievous ending on Stevens’s part—asking the reader if they really believe anything can be perceived without a subject (like the reader) to perceive it.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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The Natural World
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a poem firmly situated in the natural world. As it moves through its thirteen sections, the poem showcases nature's depth and breadth: nature, here, is awe-inspiring, fearsome, beautiful, vast, and tiny all at once. The natural world of the poem is also deeply interconnected and a constant presence in human life, whether people notice it or not.
Nature is front and center in “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” The first section, for example, describes a "snowy" mountain range—an image of nature at its most imposing. Later, the poem describes the blackbird being caught up in powerful "autumn winds." This again showcases nature’s might, but it also speaks to the connections between different parts of nature; the blackbird depends on air currents in order to fly. This blackbird is “a small part of the pantomime,” the speaker says, reflecting that the natural world is made up of parts big and small; it encompasses everything from huge mountains and swirling winds all the way down to a little blackbird.
The poem returns to this idea of nature's connectedness again and again. For example, the speaker says that the fact that the “river is moving” indicates that the blackbird “must be flying.” This could mean that the blackbird flies when the river moves, but, more surreally, could also mean that the river moves because the blackbird is flying. Broadly, it conveys the harmony and interdependency of nature.
Perhaps this unity between the different pieces of nature is at the root of the somewhat cryptic statement in the third section, in which the detached speaker says “A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one.” Humanity, the poem suggests, is just as much a part of nature as the blackbird itself.
The poem's seventh section builds on this idea. In this scene, the speaker asks why the "thin men of Haddam" bother dreaming up "golden birds" when the real-life blackbird already "Walks around the feet / of the women about you." Nature exists all around us, the poem implies, presenting a kind of beauty that human creativity can’t match—if only we'd bother to notice it!
All in all, then, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” presents nature in its weird, wonderful, and sometimes intimidating forms. The poem subtly nudges its readers to look—and look again—at the natural world around them.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
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Lines 1-3
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.Just as there might different paths through a forest, each bringing with it a different experience, there is no one correct way of understanding "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." The clue is really in the title—there are multiple ways of looking at the world (indeed, the number thirteen seems to have been picked arbitrarily by the speaker) and accordingly the poem doesn't resolve to one single, overarching perspective on blackbirds.
Rather, the poem suggests that meaning is as much constructed by the reader's experience and understanding of the poem as anything else, which foregrounds one of main ideas: that knowledge, truth, and beauty are inevitably filtered through human perspectives (though the senses and the mind). It's worth noting again, before setting off into the depths of this poem, that Stevens's himself described it as a series of "sensations," a word that accurately describes the fleeting, elusive quality of each of the poem's thirteen sections (which Stevens also thought of as mini-poems in their own right).
If human perspective and its limitless possibilities are the poem's main theme, the first stanza also introduces the other consistent thematic focus: the natural world. The first line describes an image of epic natural scenery—indeed, twenty mountains would probably stretch the limits of human perception in terms of how much the eyes can take in.
The unrelenting /n/ and /ng/ consonance of the first two lines represents the physical and visual dominance of the mountains:
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thingLine 3 contrasts the vast, imposing presence of the mountains with a much smaller—yet no less wondrous—expression of the natural world: the moving "eye of the blackbird." Amongst this vast stillness, the blackbird's eye is scouting its environment—perhaps suggesting nature's ability to adapt and survive.
Notice the way that in three short lines the poem has already set up two completely different perspectives: the telescopic vision of twenty mountains, vs. the zoomed-in perspective on the blackbird's eye. Already, then, the poem is challenging the reader to consider the fundamental role the perceiver—the person reading the poem, looking at the bird—plays in any act of perception.
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Lines 4-6
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
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Lines 7-8
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime. -
Lines 9-12
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one. -
Lines 13-17
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after. -
Lines 18-24
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. -
Lines 25-29
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? -
Lines 30-34
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know. -
Lines 35-37
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles. -
Lines 38-41
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply. -
Lines 42-47
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds. -
Lines 48-49
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying. -
Lines 50-54
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used here and there throughout "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." It's an important part of section three, for example:
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.The two /w/ sounds in line 7 convey the power of the autumn winds. The two /p/ sounds represent the blackbird's interconnected place in nature, the alliteration drawing its own connection between the line.
There isn't a huge amount of obvious alliteration elsewhere in the poem, but there is some in section five between the two mentions of "beauty" in lines 14 and 15 and the word "blackbird" itself. These /b/ sounds could be seen as a kind of ornamentation, evoking the idea of beauty (which is tied to perspective—beauty is in the eye of the beholder).
Another key example is in section nine:
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.This section is about different perspectives too, describing the point at which a flying blackbird can no longer be seen. The speaker imagines "many circles" of perception, and how the blackbird's flight "mark[s]" the edge of the speaker's own field of vision (perception). The two /m/ sounds are like marks on the page, mimicking the way the blackbird's black shape in the sky marks the edge of perception.
Finally, there is alliteration (specifically sibilance) in the final section of the poem, with "snowing," "snow," "sat," and "cedar." These quiet sounds bring the poem to a calm close, reflecting the quietness of the scene at hand: a bird sitting on a tree limb, surrounded by snow.
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Apostrophe
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Assonance
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Juxtaposition
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Metaphor
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Personification
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Pantomime
- Inflections
- Innuendoes
- Barbaric
- To and Fro
- Indecipherable
- Lucid
- Bawds
- Euphony
- Haddam
- Equipage
- Cedar-limbs
Pantomime-
A performance using movement, with its roots in ancient Roman culture.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
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Form
As its name suggests, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is made up of thirteen different stanzas or mini-poems, which Stevens called "sensations." These sensations contain from two to seven lines, and are all preceded by a Roman numeral.
Consider how many sensations a person feels every day without necessarily figuring out the meaning of each one—similarly, this isn't a poem meant to solve or answer something, but rather to savor and enjoy. Clearly, Stevens intended to create thirteen different worlds held together by the common presence of the blackbird—the unifying figure—and it's up to reader to bring their own subjectivity (their perspective) to the poem. The reader's role in the creation of meaning in relation to poetry is thus placed front and center, and the ways in which different perspectives can produce different meanings is represented by the multiple and even contradictory ways of "looking at a blackbird" presented in the poem.
In the first and last stanzas, Stevens situates the blackbird in a natural setting. Many critics have noted the similarity in tone between these sections—and the poem more generally—to the Japanese haiku form. This said, there isn't much supporting evidence for this claim (even if making the link is tempting). Perhaps the similarity between these two stanzas signifies the way that the blackbird takes the reader on a journey through different perspectives, eventually returning to the same wintry scene to mark the journey as complete.
What's also worth noting is the drastically different tones that appear throughout the poem, the fragmentation of the thirteen sections allowing the poem to make abrupt turns in speaker, subject, grammar, and so on. Sections four ("A man and a woman ..." and twelve ("The river is moving. ..") are so minimal as to become almost riddle-like, while section five ("I do not know ...") seems much more personal. Sections six ("Icicles filled ...") and eleven ("He rode over Connecticut ...") are more like gothic narratives in miniature. All in all, the variety throughout the thirteen sections underscores the poem's suggestion that there is no one, true reality; rather, there are multiple perspectives on reality (and reality can never be perceived without someone or something there to perceive it).
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Meter
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" doesn't have a metrical scheme. This is a poem written in free verse, though it's worth noting that the line length is kept relatively short throughout.
That said, this doesn't mean the poem doesn't have any instances of metrical effects. The first section of the poem (lines 1-3) is particularly interesting:
Among | twenty | snowy | mountains,
The on- | ly mov- | ing thing
Was the eye | of the blackbird.It's possible to read the first line as trochees (DUM-da) with an iambic first foot on "Among" (da-DUM). The second line is then totally iambic. The first two lines, then, sound pretty regular in terms of meter—suggesting the still and steady sight of the mountain range. The third line feels more disjointed rhythmically, perhaps suggesting small but perceptible movement (like the eye itself).
In the twelfth section, both lines (48-49) end with a trochee:
... moving.
... flying.This subtly reinforces these two sentences as logically connected by giving them a similar sound.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" doesn't use rhyme. The poem is about different "ways of looking"—that is, different perspectives—and is basically made up of a bunch of mini-poems. With this in mind, a strict rhyme scheme would probably feel too neat and unified for the poem's subject matter.
There is a slant rhyme between lines 40 and 41:
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.Here, the poem implicitly (and playfully) criticizes "bawds of euphony." This may be a reference to poetry that is too simple and trite in its rhyming, and the slight rhyme could be a subtle way of pocking fun at this style. Of course, that's just one interpretation!
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Speaker
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There is no one stable speaker in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Instead, the poem seems to jump between speakers, reflecting its idea that there are always multiple perspectives on a scene.
Sometimes, the voice sounds like a detached observer. This is the case in the first and last sections, where the poem's focus is on nature. There is no "I" in these moments—but then an "I" does appear in sections two, five, and eight. In truth, though, there is nothing to suggest that these all refer to the same person, though. The "I" who is "of three minds" might not be the same "I" who thinks about "which beauty to prefer." Section seven then seems like it's in its own special category, especially as it takes the form of rhetorical questioning, whereas sections six and eleven sound more like the narrative voice from horror fiction—that is, they sound like some omniscient narrator describing the scene at hand. All in all, then, there's no single voice guiding the poem, and that's part of the point. The poem is about different ways of seeing the world, and each section presents a different perspective.
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“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Setting
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Generally speaking, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" feels like it is set in the natural world. However, as with the poem's speaker, the setting changes—sometimes abruptly—from section to section.
The poem begins and ends with a wintry scene full of snow. In the first section, the opening image of a broad mountain range suddenly zooms in on the blackbird's eye. The setting, then, is being used as a way of contrasting the different scales and sizes of the natural world. Section three mentions a tree, while in section four the blackbird "whirl[s] in the autumn winds." There's something quite elemental about the poem's beginning, then. Other sections that fit with these are sections twelve and thirteen, and to a lesser degree section nine. All in all, they give the impression of a sparse environment in which the blackbird is the main point of focus. And bringing the poem back round to an image of snow in the end suggests that the blackbird's journey—which takes the reader through thirteen different perspectives—has also come to an end.
Sections six and eleven are markedly different from the rest of the poem, however, and read as if they are set in some kind of gothic novel. This contributes to the poem's discussion of perspective and subjectivity, showing how the blackbird can be a frightening or threatening figure depending on who perceives it. This contrasts with more natural sections mentioned above, in which the blackbird seems more in tune with its surroundings, rather than a sign that something bad is going to happen.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
Literary Context
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. He is generally considered part of the modernist tradition, though his poetry is so distinctive that it doesn't really fit in with the work of other modernist figures like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
Instead, critics often link Stevens with Romantic writers like William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although Stevens lived almost a century after these writers, he shares many of their concerns, most particularly the belief that each individual's imagination shapes their experience of the world. Like many of the Romantics, Stevens was interested in using poetry not just to exercise his imagination, but to work through his ideas. In this, he resembles Hart Crane, another modernist poet with Romantic leanings.
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" was published in Stevens's debut collection Harmonium (1923). Stevens described the poem as a collection of "sensations," and as a "group of poems" (which suggests they can be taken separately and as a whole). While not an instant success, Harmonium is now considered one of the most influential collections of 20th-century poetry. Other poems in the book also explore the role that perspective plays in shaping reality—or at least the experience of reality. Check out "The Snow Man" for another classic example.
Historical Context
The poem was published in Stevens's 1923 collection Harmonium, which appeared between the two world wars. But Stevens's poetry is never that concerned with the context in which it was written; it prefers to construct a world of its own.
Stevens famously lived a quiet life in suburban Connecticut, where he worked as an insurance executive and wrote poetry by night (or, as the story goes, composed it in his head on his stroll to work). The contemplative reveries of Stevens's poetry have often been linked to the fact that he was able to live a life of quiet prosperity, insulated from many of the tumultuous events of his time.
The name "blackbird" applies to numerous species of birds. Stevens is probably thinking of the New World blackbird, which in itself is a catch-all term relating to species found primarily in North America as opposed to Europe or Asia (the Common blackbird). The blackbird has popped up in art and culture for centuries. In classical Greece, for example, it was seen as a symbol of destruction (which, arguably, sections six and eleven in this poem agree with). In Europe, blackbirds were often hunted and, as the old nursery rhyme goes, "baked in a pie."
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More “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Resources
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External Resources
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The Thrilling Mind of Wallace Stevens — An interesting article about Stevens's life and work.
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A Reading of the Poem — Tom O'Bedlam reads "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
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Birds and Poetry — A short but excellent selection of bird-related poems.
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The Blackbird's Song — A full meditative hour of blackbird singing.
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The Poet's Life and Work — A bountiful resource from the Poetry Foundation, including podcasts, essays, and more poems.
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Bloom on Stevens — Audio of a fascinating lecture on Stevens by Harold Bloom, one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Wallace Stevens
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