Wallace Stevens is not a visionary Romantic in pursuit of transcendent realms; he believes that the modern poet can reside

only in the everyday world. Comment. Wallace Stevenss poem , Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is a complex poem which is also very metaphorical and abstract. The blackbird is included in all the stanzas suggesting a unity in the whole poem. It seems to be a metaphor which in some way is the subject in and is the underlying link among the apparently disjointed and arbitrary stanzas of the poem. In this paper I chose to interpret the poem as a very enigmatic and indirect emphasis by the author on the idea of unity to the realities in the everyday world. In modernist times when reality was increasingly being described as fragmented and disjointed and there was a lot of talk about the difficulty to communicate unitary themes and social reality was no longer a fashionable subject, Stevens seems to be arguing the opposite in this poem by highlighting an underlying link to the various aspects of reality or the several planes of everyday life. The poem is also a modernist and there are sufficient signs of the poet being influenced by the Imagist movement of the early twentieth century of which Stevens is widely known to be a well known proponent. However like the romantics the poet also makes use of a lot of images from nature but it must be pointed out that it has not been used as a transcendentalist device or a escapist agenda but the everyday world as will be argued here. The Imagists believed in using precise and definite images and not vague generalities. In the Imagist style the blackbird and the various ways in which it has been talked of in the poem present natural and often concrete images to the reader which however have a symbolic meaning which is by no means concrete or definite. The Imagists also believed in using words of common speech and that free verse was a more suitable way of writing than other conventional forms. Stevens too has used a very simple language, which are used in common speech and all his poems were in free verse. The metaphor of the blackbird and its occurrence in all the stanzas strongly hints at the possibility of a unifying link to reality or its various aspects. Stanza 8, in the poem hints most strongly to this interpretation: I know noble accents, And lucid, inescapable rhythms, But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know Here, more than anywhere else in the poem there is a strong suggestion that the blackbird, whatever it is the metaphor for is at least an important subject. The author seems to be saying that his role as an artist, and here he seems secure in the awareness of his talent as an artist or poet who creates lucid, inescapable rhythms is also defined at least to an extent by the blackbird. There are indications that the blackbird is a metaphor for reality or maybe, the everyday world. However it is only an interpretation because the poem at no point provides any very direct hint in any tangible, concrete terms. The poem it must be admitted is very abstract and enigmatic and although the poet seems to be persistent in the suggestion of the existence of a unitary theme which links all its stanzas, he also seems to have taken care to be very ambiguous about the exact nature of the theme. The first stanza is very vague in which the poet presents the curious image of twenty snowy mountains in which the only movable object is the eye of the blackbird. The twenty mountains give

the impression of a large landscape and permanence. Here the metaphor of the blackbird can mean many things. It can also be taken to mean that the nature of reality is always changing however static and stationary or fixed things might seem. The eye of the blacking which is the only moving thing in a large, permanent and natural landscape can also be said to be hinting at the gradual and historical nature of reality. When reality is assumed to be the consistent subject of the poem for which the metaphor of the blackbird stands the poem lends itself to be interpreted remarkably well. The ambiguity concerning the blackbird as a metaphor and its occurrence in all the stanzas (for if anything is clear in the poem, it is that this is a metaphor and not to be taken literally), it might be argued is about the difficulty and the number of different ways in which reality can be understood. The poem is highly abstract and therefore although not very easy to interpret but it is possible to interpret it in many ways. It is almost paradoxical that although the metaphorical blackbird is present in all the stanzas the theme, whatever it is because the poem is very indirect and ambiguous about it, it would seem the author is very reluctant in spelling it out. Several critics have acknowledged the difficulty of interpreting the poem in any satisfactory manner. The second stanza too is vague and amenable to several interpretations. Some critics have taken it to be a Biblical illusion to the Trinity whereas, some have pointed out that it might be about the fragmented nature of consciousness consisting of the Freudian id, ego and superego. When one looks at the poem as a whole, Stevens seems to be arguing or highlighting the unifying nature of reality or social reality of the everyday world and of it, being a whole rather than being fragmented and as assumed by much of modernism. The blackbird has been looked at in different ways, precisely thirteen in the poem giving an illusion of subjectivity on the same subject, the metaphorical blackbird. However there is no hint that the number thirteen is important in any way or that there cannot be more ways of looking at it. It seems to me as if the poet was saying that one can look at reality from various angles or perspectives but you can never escape it and it is an objective one all the same. The blackbird remains and is the only consistent occurrence which lends the poem organisational and thematic unity but it has been described in different ways and other than the metaphor itself there is seems to be no other link to the whole poem. In stanzas 4 and 7, Stevens talks about women hinting at the possibility that the theme of the poem is also about social lives of men and women. In stanza 7 the poet almost questions but rhetorically: Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?. These lines quite evidently have feminist implications and in this stanza and in stanza 9 poet has talked of human life quite directly and there are images of real life and Connecticut has also been mentioned indicating that the theme has been drawn from social reality or the everyday world more specifically a place in America. Haddam in stanza the 7 is also the name of a small town in the US and in this stanza the poet seems to be highlighting the feminist agenda and the need to confront reality and the line, Why do you imagine golden birds? seems like a warning against escapist tendencies. The seventh stanza can be interpreted as the confusion and the indecipherable nature of reality. The last stanza seems to be celebrating the adaptability of social reality however gloomy the times might be. The poet has also used a lot of images from nature and it can be said he resists making an opposition between the natural and the human world. In fact the poet seems to be hinting at compatibility between the two. For example, in stanza 4 the poet says that, A man and a woman are one and then he goes on to say that, A man and a blackbird are one. It can mean that the poet wants

to say that men and women and the social realities combine to form a whole. Because the poet draws so many images from the natural world including the principle metaphor of the blackbird and because the theme has not been spelt out so very clearly one could be misled into thinking the poet to be a romantic poet of the transcendentalist or obscurantist kind. But this is clearly not the case as the poem has no supernatural elements and as argued in the preceding paragraph the poet is interested in social reality although he uses many images from nature. Stevens makes use of natural imagery to highlight a perspective or state of mind in many of his poems. For example, in his poem The Snow Man too the poet has talked of the need for and the possibility of adapting to beautiful or striking but harsh natural/social reality. The ending lines of the poem, For the listener, who listens in the snow..beholds Nothing that is not there and nothing that is suggest the difficulty or the impossibility of comprehending or understanding the nature of reality. But this is a reality which in, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird has been hinted enigmatically and rather indirectly by the poet as being apparently disordered and disconnected but which nevertheless has a unitary nature and forms a whole and its several aspects are related.