2
Ways of Seeing
“birds” is licensed under CC0 1.0
“How do you know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
One of the standard and more successful methods of teaching writing is the model approach. The teacher presents a work of prose or poetry, the students study its form, content, meaning and whatever else, and then attempt to write their own pieces, modeled on the original. Creativity and ingenuity (what we sometimes refer to as surprise) are clearly valued here because the idea is certainly not to create a piece that in any way sounds or acts like the original. The idea is to create a new, original piece that is wholly of, and by, the student-writer.
Without a tedious amount of introduction, we’re going to suggest that your next poetical creative effort be modeled on Wallace Stevens’ brilliant yet somewhat obscure poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a piece that has now gone down as a little bit of Americana, one of the great artifacts of twentieth-century literary America.
First things first. You need to read the poem. You may have already read more poems than you ever wanted to see in your life in Chapter One. This chapter, “Ways of Seeing,” is about opening yourself up to new things, about looking at the world in new ways. Poetry is one way to do just that. So, give it a try. Most people won’t understand “Blackbirds” anyway after a first reading. That’s what we’re here for. We’re going to walk through it step by step as soon as you’re done. Go ahead. Click the link and read the poem. We’ll wait.
Now, before we give you all the answers and relieve your insatiable thirst for what, exactly, Wallace Stevens is talking about, read the poem again. Aloud. Hear it. Feel it. See those blackbirds perched on a telephone wire in your backyard, cawing so loudly you want to take out a Mossberg 590M and blow them to kingdom come. Now imagine one against the scenic mountains of stanza one, whirling in the autumn winds of stanza three, sitting on the boughs of a ceder tree as the snow slowly drifts from the sky.
A tip. When you read a poem out loud, always read the title. Most people don’t. As we suggested in Chapter One, there are times when a title means everything to a poem. If the poet wanted you not to read the title, they wouldn’t have given one.
Now that you have read the poem twice, you’re as lost as you were the first time, right? Well, how should we make meaning out of this collage of sights and sounds and dark birds? A good place to start is with the title. (That’s why we insisted on its importance.) There are two words in that title that stand out, that go a long way toward making meaning. What are they? If you said “of” and “a,” try again. Obviously, the important words in a title are capitalized, and among these possibilities, “Thirteen” and “Blackbird” stand out. Both are charged with meaning. Perhaps no number in our society is more laden with significance, usually negative significance, than the number thirteen. You don’t have to be triskaidekaphobic (that is, have a morbid fear of the number thirteen) to appreciate the negative charge on this number. Just step into an elevator and look at the buttons. See anything missing? That’s right. There often isn’t a thirteenth floor because some visitors wouldn’t want a room on that unlucky floor.
amber dawn pullin from Canada / CC BY
Combine this with the black bird, which, like a black cat, suggests ominous, scary, portentous happenings, even evil itself, and you have a real entryway into the possibilities for poetry that Wallace Stevens is raising in “Thirteen Ways…” After all, Stevens could have chosen eight ways or sixteen ways or whatever. His choice of thirteen seems highly intentional. British art critic John Berger makes this notion of choice all the more clear when he suggests that every choice we make in art is made from an infinite number of other possible choices.
“Corvus corax (common raven)” is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Now let’s turn to the bird itself. Not any bird. A blackbird and black bird. For generations, poets have turned to our winged friends (that phrase, meaning birds, is a periphrasis, by the way. A long, more poetic way of saying something short) for inspiration. John Keats wrote “Ode to a Nightingale.” His contemporary, Percy Bysshe Shelley, penned “To a Skylark.” A half century later, Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized “The Eagle”:
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Just thought we’d sneak that in here. After all, it’s short. We’ll return to it later, in our chapter on sounds.
We could talk more about bird poems, citing William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl,” Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is a Thing with Feathers,” Robert Penn Warren’s “Evening Hawk,” Robert Frost’s “The Oven-Bird,” Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird,” etc. Hell, almost every poet worth their salt has a bird poem or two. But the thing to remember about them is that, generally, poets celebrated the beautiful qualities about birds: their plumage, their flight, their songs. In the case of the eagle, king of birds, British poet Tennyson celebrates its nobility and power: it falls like a thunderbolt, after all, not like a dead leaf in autumn.
One other thing. What is arguably the most famous poem in all of American literature is about a bird. A blackbird. A dark, ominous, intruder who suggests the hopelessness of human endeavor. That poem is called “The Raven,” and it was written by Edgar Allan Poe in the nineteenth-century (around 1845, to be more precise).
Stevens knew that poem, as did almost every school kid of his generation growing up in America. “One upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” the opening internally rhyming line of “The Raven,” used to be as well-known to as “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light.”
Many twentieth-century poets have followed Poe’s lead in writing about birds that do not have the grandeur or beauty of the birds in the poems of their literary ancestors. Thus we have Seamus Heaney’s “The Blackbird of Glanmore”, Williams’ “Sparrow,” Ted Hughes’s “Crow” and here, Stevens’ “Blackbird.” And yet one of the major points Stevens continually drives home is that the blackbird is every bit as much a proper subject for poetry, even aesthetic (beautiful) poetry, as any other more typically poetic bird. It all depends on the way you look. (If you want to explore the sights and sounds of birds, head over to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where you can hear a whole host of black birds’ calls and look at some of the striking images of blackbirds.)
Stanza One
So let’s begin.. First off, it’s a haiku. As we’ll later see (chapter 3) the haiku is a terse Japanese verse form with some very strict rules. Let’s just say for now that it has three lines, presents vivid imagery, often portrays a specific nature scene and season, and may present you with an intriguing and unique way of viewing this scene. This first stanza shows us a wintry, mountainous scene. In this giant tableau (twenty mountains!), the poet zeros in on the only thing that is animate, alive, moving: the eye of a single blackbird. The scene itself is dormant, dead, both literally and symbolically (winter often symbolizes death: check our seasonal symbolism chart in the appendix). What does the eye of the blackbird symbolize? We may want to hold off on this, but we’ll give you an initial clue. In our postmodern era, a lot of writing is about the act of writing itself. A lot of poetry is about the act of writing poetry. This is what is called self-referential art or meta-poetry. It refers to itself. What other eye has been moving in order to capture this scene? The poet’s eye of course.
Stanza Two
Of course…Number two is another haiku. And what a tiny, clever, brilliant idea. We often ask our students to draw these scenes, so that they may better understand them. Let’s draw this one:
What did you expect, John James Audubon? We’re writing teachers, not artists. But if you want to see what an artist could do, check out this site. Anyway, here we have three blackbirds happily perched on different boughs of a tree. This, supposedly, is like a person who is of three minds. Have you ever heard someone who cannot make up his mind say, “I’m of two minds about that?” Well, Steven’s persona is in this situation, except he’s of three minds. Let’s see how. Faced with any situation, a person might choose alternative X or Y, or choose not to choose, to remain status quo. Or he might choose among X, Y or Z. Voila! Three minds. Now, back to our tree, just in case you thought we’d forgotten. With Stevens, in “Blackbirds” as well as in other poems, you have to look not only at the present moment, but at a future or past moment. What happens to those blackbirds if you come up below and shout, or shake the tree? They fly off in three different directions. Stevens uses this as a metaphor for a person who cannot make up his mind.
Stanza Three
A pantomime is silent. The blackbird is whirling in the wind, at the mercy of nature, small in its size and power. So are we all at the mercy of nature. Notice the seasonal shift back from winter to autumn. A time of decay, of dying. We are all at the mercy of nature: birds, humans, all.
Stanza Four
Number 4 seems like a riddle, and it is. How are a man and a woman and a blackbird one? Is this some kinky . . . Oops, excuse us. Wallace is merely pointing out in his usual obscure manner that all nature is interrelated, that we’re all together on this planet and that people’s actions have an impact on nature and vice-versa.
Stanza Five
In his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats wrote: “Heard melodies are sweet/Those unheard are sweeter.” Sometimes the imagination is even more powerful than reality in its ability to create beauty. Here Stevens doesn’t know which is more pleasing, the whistling of a blackbird or the silence, in which you may re-create that sound in your mind, or perhaps, create any other sound you wish, or better yet, just enjoy the beauty of silence.
Stanza Six
Winter again. Number six is certainly ominous. Look at the diction and imagery: “icicles,” “barbaric,” “shadow,” “indecipherable.” The last word means we can’t figure out what something means. Precisely. It’s a mood, not a meaning. Edgar Allan Poe, by the way, was insistent that literary works should create an “effect” or mood. He also suggested that the realm of the poem was beauty, that its chief aim was aesthetics. Could Stevens be commenting on Poe’s theories, updating them by showing that the foreboding, gloomy raven could also be beautiful if viewed in a new light? Stay tuned.
Stanza Seven
“Haddam” in number seven is a town located about 25-30 miles southeast of Hartford, Connecticut. “Thin men” suggests that these guys don’t have much substance (The folksinger, Bob Dylan, wrote a song to this effect: “Ballad of a Thin Man.”) because they seek after the exotic, when miracles are all around them. Why, says the persona, do these men look for beauty in far off places? Can’t they see the beauty right in front of them? Obviously not. That’s why they’re thin men in the first place. In the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle spoke of “natural supernaturalism” or the concept that everything in nature was a miracle (which, of course, is true) except that we tend to take the everyday world for granted. “Custom blinds us to the miraculousness of daily-recurring miracles,” he wrote. Stevens’ seventh stanza is a poetic restatement of that concept. To be clichéd about it, “The grass is always greener….”
Stanza Eight
Number 8 drives home the same theme as seven, with a twist, and, aurally instead of visually. The persona has heard beautiful music, the euphonious sounds of birds, perhaps (”noble accents”). They’re cool. But the blackbird’s song is not so bad, either. It’s deep, it’s soulful. The blackbird knows what we know, his darkness, his cacophonous (noisy) voice is often our voice as well. We can’t escape this side of our being.
Stanza Nine
Expand your horizons, number nine suggests. So the blackbird flies out of YOUR view. That doesn’t mean he’s gone. It just means you are too limited to see him. As basketball players, particularly playmakers, want to expand their peripheral vision so they can see the entire court, so any person should strive to see more of the world. Look at the Blake quotation that serves as the epigraph of this chapter. Moreover, poets, those who capture the side of the world others rarely see by themselves, must, absolutely must, expand their vision, their horizons, their ways of seeing. Again we can refer to the work of nineteenth-century poet and mystic William Blake, who wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite./For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” The quotation, by the way stems from Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” an amazing little book about mind-expansion. In the twentieth century, novelist Aldous Huxley took the title The Doors of Perception from Blake. Here’s another little piece of trivia: In the 1960s another budding poet by the name of Jim Morrison liked the whole concept of opening doors. So he took the name of his band from Blake via Huxley. The rest, as, they say, is rock ‘n’ roll history.
One more side note: Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl” (1818) alluded to earlier, employs a similar image of a bird flying out of sight. “Thou’rt gone,” the poet says in apostrophe, “the abyss of heaven/Hath swallowed up thy form, yet on my heart/Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.”
Number nine, therefore, is a call to readers not to be limited by what we can see. When the blackbird flies out of our zone, it merely enters another one–some other viewer’s zone, perhaps.
Stanza Ten
Number ten is tricky. Hmmm. We could say that about all of them. But every student who reads number ten has the same question: what does “bawds of euphony” mean? We’ll admit to being sadistic teachers once in a while. We tell the students, “look it up.” In fact, sometimes we make them look it up, under penalty of a quiz first thing the next day. So they dutifully look up first “bawds,” then “euphony” in their Webster’s. This is what they find:
bawd/’bod/ [ME bowde] 1 obs: PANDER 2 a: one who keeps a house of prostitution; MADAM b: PROSTITUTE
euphony/’yu-f -ne/ n, pl–nies [F euphonie, fr. LL euphonia, fr. Gk euphonia fr. euphonos sweet-voiced, musical, fr. eu– + phone voice–more at BAN] 1: pleasing or sweet sound; esp: the acoustic effect produced by words so formed or combined as to please the ear 2: a harmonious succession of words having a pleasing sound
The next day, in class, we give the quiz. One question only. What does the stanza mean? “Well,” they theorize, “’Bawds’ means prostitutes and ‘euphony’ is nice sounding words. So there are these prostitutes, you see who talk to you in a sweet voice because they want you to . . . .” So goes our little quiz. A professor of English we once had always claimed that you could figure out the meaning of anything by simply understanding all the words. You look ‘em up. You figure ‘em out. We’re not so sure. Put “bawds” and “euphony” together and you’re still a long way away. Figurative language, you see.
Here’s what Stevens really means. “Bawds” traditionally also refers to pimps (check Shakespeare), or those who sell other’s sexual favors. The phrase “bawds of euphony” is Stevens’s put-down of those who accept sweet-sounding things, pretty things, as the only ones worthy of being considered marketable, or worth value. In other words, those who sell-out to the standard, traditional, boring approach to beauty. Stevens suggests that the glint of green light phosphorescing off the bird’s black body would also be beautiful, and even the biggest sell outs would be forced to notice that aesthetic quality.
Stanza Eleven
You need a breather. So do we. Therefore, we’ll inject a space by admitting that number XI has always left us befuddled. Perhaps it’s just a mood, fear, and no more. Another way of looking. Good enough.
Stanza Twelve
Number twelve (only two to go!) is, like “a man and a woman…” about the interrelatedness of all nature. Notice the season is likely not winter. The river is not iced over. Things in nature also speak themselves. The river flows. That’s what it does. The blackbird flies. The poet writes.
Stanza Thirteen
Number thirteen. Another great tableau. Check out the clever paradox in the first line: “It was evening all afternoon.” It’s not hard to make students in the Midwest understand that line. On a typical fall/winter afternoon, many parts of the Rust Belt are gloomy, sunless, depressing. It is evening all afternoon. Finally, listen to the windy, snowy sounds of “the blackbird sat in the cedar limbs.” There is a certain simple beauty to all of this. Again, black vivid and sharp on a white background. The patience of the bird. The same patience an artist must display to fully master the craft. Sometimes it involves simply sitting and watching and turning ideas over for hours.
Is there an allusion to–intertextuality (we’ll explain the term in chapter 5) with–Poe’s Raven, who, in Poe’s final stanza, is “never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting . . . just above my chamber door?” Maybe. But Poe is so depressing, with the bird’s repeating admonition to the man who has lost the love of his life: “nevermore.” That bird is such a bleak metaphor for doom, lost love, and depression.
Stevens gives us this and twelve other ways to observe the bird, ways that have nothing to do with our preconceived notion that thirteen combined with blackness must add up to evil and despair. In fact, while you are probably not familiar enough with the rest of Stevens’s work to know this, in poem after poem he urges readers to open their minds and look at things freshly. For example, in “The Snowman,” he writes that “One must have a mind of winter/to regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow…and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind.” A neat idea, if you follow. But you need a mind of winter to do so, perhaps, as the poet needs a mind of winter not to write with the same old boring clichés that have filled bad books for centuries.
So “Thirteen Ways…” is about nature, about art, about creating one from the other, and about getting the mind of the blackbird, so to speak. The artist, the painter, the sculptor, the poet, all need to be that one dark eye among twenty white mountains, that intelligence that transforms the world, re-writes the world, reinvigorates dead nature and the dead wood of clichés.
Whew. Take a break. Get a water. Take a nap. (We’ve always thought every day is a good day for a nap.) We’re about to tell you what to do, now that you’ve mastered blackbirds.
We’d start by suggesting that you read the entire poem one more time, now that it may begin to make sense, but we know you already know to do that. In fact, we’d suggest you keep reading the poem over and over until it starts to do something to you. Even if it’s just to make you sick to your stomach. But we’ll hope for more. We’re all poets here, after all.
Now it’s time to take up the pen. Here’s the assignment:
Assignment 2. 0: Ways of Seeing
Directions:
- Base your poem on Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
- Choose 7-15 ways of looking at or otherwise sensing a subject of your choice.
- Be original; create surprise; be creative (this course is called creative writing, right?)
- Be vivid. Use imagery that forces the reader to understand you. Ransack those five senses for your images.
- Do not merely parody Stevens . . . “A man and a woman and a Lamborghini Countach are one . . . .” Come to think of it, parody can work, but if you try it, be good. Be very good.
- Be profound. Say something you haven’t heard (and your teacher hasn’t heard) a million times. Don’t say the obvious. “Grass is green.” True, but who cares?
- Grading to be based on:
- originality
- imagery
- profundity
- conciseness
- use of poetic techniques
- Remember the rules for submitting a paper in this class. DON’T FORGET A TITLE FOR YOUR POEM.
Tips and Samples
The fundamentals of the writing process suggest that you pre-write for your poem by first attempting some sort of brainstorming. The key to this assignment, as with almost any creative assignment, is to first come up with a good idea. While it is true that you can write a clever, original poem on just about any subject, a clever, original subject can certainly jump-start your poem a lot better than a clichéd, overused subject.
You might begin by listing, perhaps, five subjects that you know enough about to write a “ways of seeing”:
- _____________________
- _____________________
- _____________________
- _____________________
- _____________________
Next, you need to narrow these down, so that you have one topic that really floats your boat, so to speak. One you can really attack. Even if you are not an expert yet, you can learn more about your subject through research, through observing (ways of seeing), by asking others, etc.
When you have that one topic, you might continue your prewriting by making a list of everything you can think of regarding the subject. Free-associate on the topic. Write down anything you think of, no matter how ludicrous or mundane. Since this exercise divides the subject into a number of sub-topics, “treeing” your topic might not be a bad idea. Here’s a sample:
Whatever your prewriting technique, don’t let it distract you from the real task–that is, don’t use pre-writing as a method of procrastination. If you are one of those people who can go right to the poem, go right to it!
But we’re not going to turn you loose here without some direction. We wouldn’t do that to you. Instead, we’ll give you some samples of what others have done with their “Ways of Seeing” poems. That way, you can better come up with your own ideas.
We said in the assignment description to be careful about parody, but that’s where we’ll start. Stevens’ poem is so distinctive in form and content that it lends itself to parody. Whether this is good or bad, whether Stevens would have approved, we don’t know. It’s just a fact. Here’s one by a friend of ours, John Bird, who’s a professor of English at Winthrop University. It’s a parody called “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard”:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackboard
by John Bird
I.
It’s not really black
II.
It’s sort of green
III.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics
scrawled by a hand that flunked
kindergarten
IV.
Wallace Stevens’ name imprinted
in dusty white.
V.
Remnants of forgotten chalks
too small to fit the fingers.
VI.
Swipes of rectangle eraser marks.
VII.
The screech of fingernails
Straightening the hair
And turning the blood into boiling tomato soup
like chewing aluminum foil on the molars.
VIII.
The juxtaposition of the banal and profound
a children’s ditty beside an Emersonian truth.
IX.
The transitory nature of artistic endeavor:
truth banished with one swipe of the cloth.
X.
A circle with a greasy nose print on its mid-point.
XI.
I will not talk in class.
I will not talk in class.
I will not talk in class.
XII.
x= yb
and who really cares?
XIII.
At night when the lights are off and
students are asleep
a band of fairies
gambol and dance
and write dirty limericks
with their feet.
Here’s another clever parody, by a former student, Steve Ellson. It’s called “Nine Ways to Look at Cold Pizza.”
Nine Ways to Look at Cold Pizza
by Steve Ellson
Among shelves of containers
The only vivid memory
Was the scent of cold pizza
The pizza enticed my taste buds.
It was part of the excitement of the feast.
Cheese and sauce
are one.
Cheese and sauce and pizza
are one.
I’m not sure which is better
The warmth of the dough
Or the flavors of the peppers
The fresh pizza
Or my full stomach.
O fat men of Brighton
Why do you imagine red lobsters?
Do you not see the pizza
Falling to the floor
Of the carpets about you.
When the pizza was completely devoured
It marked the end of one of many culinary circles.
At the sight of cold pizza
Warming in red light,
Even bards in effigy
would sing out longingly.
The beer is flowing
The pizza must be warming.
It was suppertime all day.
I was eating
And I was going to eat.
The cold pizza sat
On the refrigerator shelf.
An inherent danger in parody, or any comedic pursuit, is the risk of falling flat.Some of the stanzas above are inspired. Others are less strong. That’s what we mean when we say “be very good” if you’re going to attempt parody. One final parody, also by a student, is among our favorites. Perhaps it’s self-interest. Here’s Peter Nicholas’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Teacher”:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Teacher (with Apologies to Wallace Stevens)
by Peter Nicholas
I.
Among twenty snoring students,
The only moving thing
Was the mouth of the teacher.
II.
I was of three minds,
Like a subject
Which is taught by three teachers.
III.
The teacher taught in his small, wooden classroom.
It was only a small part of his endless mission.
IV.
A student and his mind
Are naught.
A student and his mind and a teacher
Are all.
V.
I don’t know which to prefer
The learning of new ideas
Or the connecting of many thoughts,
The teacher educating
Or just after.
VI.
Blank looks gazed at the long blackboard
With illegible marks.
The shadow of the teacher
Crossed it, to and fro.
The attention span
Fluctuated in the classroom,
An unfair annoyance.
VII.
O bored kids of Brighton
Why do you imagine professors?
Do you not see how the teacher
Teaches what he knows
Of the life around you?
VIII.
I know dreams of fortune
And hopeful dreams of success;
But I know, too,
That the teacher is involved
In what I know.
IX.
When the teacher was far behind,
It marked the end
Of the beginning of my life.
X.
At the sight of teachers
Grading papers in the dimly lit kitchen.
Even the students who claimed hatred of them
Would look upon him with respect
XI.
He drove over to BOCES
In an old Chevette.
Once, a thought pierced him,
In that he likened
The teachers he had always hated
To himself.
XII.
The river is moving,
The teacher must be working.
XIII.
It was English all afternoon,
He was teaching
And he was going to teach.
The teacher sat
At his tiny desk.
Well, you can see why teachers would appreciate that one. Peter, by the way, received an A+++, if memory serves. Well, maybe just an A++.
Despite our having just presented a range of parodies, we want to state right here and now that our strong preference is for poems that do not parody blackbirds. Unless you have a very good idea, it’s too easy just to use Stevens’ own basic format, slip your own words in every once in a while, and create a pretty bad poem.
Here are some published versions:
So let’s move on to other ways of seeing. All are by former students.
Nine Ways of Viewing Deer
by Matt Barry
Bobbing through ceder trees,
Its distinctive white tail
Is the only trace of the fleeing doe.
Victim from last year’s hunter,
The crippled buck moves haltingly
Toward the harvest of acorns at the oak tree’s base.
Rutting season;
The buck’s vivid, tear-jerking scent
Marks the open meadow as his territory.
Startled,
The deer’s characteristic, high-pitched cry
Echoes through the canyon.
Two fawns, cautiously edging from the brush,
Follow doe to the watering pond.
Its hide protects
As stray twigs and melting snowflakes
Are whisked away.
The retreating, demoralized buck
emits large pulses of warm air from his
frozen nostrils;
His only trace; cloven hoof prints in the blanket
of pure snow.
Resplendent in the morning sunlight,
The buck proudly displays his immense rack;
Black eyes, always alert, warn of danger.
Antlers locked in mortal combat,
bucks fight to the death.
Eight Ways of Looking at Old Age
by Jennifer Dunbar
I call him maybe once a week
He’s always home.
He thanks me for telephoning.
He scare the hell out of me, the way he drives.
He runs red lights, and once
Pulled in front of a rushing ambulance.
I think he was just confused.
He tells me stories of my mom and aunt
When they were young.
We laugh a lot then, when he
speaks of the past.
I cut down a Christmas tree for him this year.
That plastic thing he used to put up
Smelled old and musty.
There’s a picture on his bureau.
He holds a sleeping baby.
Out of the car, into the cold night air
He walks slowly to the door.
My coat is thin and my teeth chatter, but
He shuffles along, feet scraping the pavement.
In the yellowed pages of his yearbook
there is a picture.
His hair is dark and parted in the middle
And the caption underneath says
“Boxer’s trainer–senior play.”
He taught me to play pool when I was seven
We spent Hours in the basement
I loved chalking the stick and
Ticking off the Points that showed I was winning.
Dante’s Inferno: 1987
by Tom Clay
Fire,
Burning realization into condemned Souls.
Satan–An arsonist with horns.
Torture and Suffering at the hands of a pyromaniac
Payment of an eternal Bill.
Term Paper
Due Monday
3:00 Sunday–No Topic
Library is closed.
Dining, Silk napkins and Gold Toothpicks
A dollar a calorie
A petite woman, should eat like a squirrel
Becomes Henry the Eighth
As the wallet cries rape
Whining from Dining
A turquoise sky,
Spring reluctantly relinquishing its reign
A warm breeze,
Like clothes from a drier, warm, security
Barefoot, nature’s carpet underfoot
A present from man’s best friend
Today
Ruined, with one squashy footstep.
Relief,
Bladder–bulging, aching, screaming
Two legs, intertwined, become one.
A sign–”MEN,” like a messiah
Crucified by another, “OUT OF ORDER.”
From the Metallic Surgeon
Sanding out scars, refining rust
A Car
Shining, DEMANDING ATTENTION
Parading into the cruel world
A costly display of egotism,
SMACK
Leaving the Surgeon totaling his Bill.
Little Cumberland Island
by Alix Van Geel
A shrimper
bobs around the sapphire sea;
Near the circumference of sight
a dark bar of island
lures the eye of
the captain.
In the kind of dark
only untame places have
the scrawny giants, the loggerheads
scratch out nests and shining tears
trickle to the sand and
luminous sea.
The sun is bright;
The shadow of my hand
waves, and the crabs
cringe into muddy holes.
Dancing under the cedar trees! (while
probing rain discovers us), drenched
in the fog and drunk with tongueless joy
among the vibrant hillocks,
come–
rejoice!
Across the wash of spiked grass
the band of simple orange glow
blacks cauliflower trees before it,
and
the gray horse walks
across the gray marsh, invisible
almost, with a hollow
sucking sound.
Darkness
by Tiffany Tette
The deluge of death
diffuses to decrepit bodies
like blood to bitter extremities.
Amorphous masks of black,
amplified in the minds
of those aloof.
Reckless riders racked by wrath
glide
to their red revelation.
Rekindling the kindest of romances
at midnight
under the dim starlight
kissing his kummel.
Midnight nudists nabbing
their nacreous bottoms,
naptime in the nest
narrating stories of navels.
Eager like an eagle for its prey,
ebullient with earnest
to be emperor
yet
the echo of these dreams
drowns
in the ebony of reality.
The starlight shines upon the soliloquy
of a sailor
singing of sobriety,
The saccharine scent,
the shimmering sips of sherry
streaming down the sides
of his salty facade.
Saturday night pseudo-somnambulist
Sammy
Subservient to the darkness,
slithering, shivering behind shrubbery
spying on sexy Suzy
through the sliding glass door,
suddenly slips in a small pool of mud.
Sullied; swathed in sultry star-
spangled sleepers.
Startling the neighbors
Standing in stupor.
With the last few poems we move beyond “ways of seeing” exercises to a more finished product. Ultimately, unless you are parodying Stevens, a “Ways of Seeing” poem should become unrecognizable from the model, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and gain its own autonomy as an original, unattached, non-derivative piece of work. The first clear indication of this in the final three poems occurs in the title. None mentions “ways.” They have become their own entity, just poems, and that’s good.
Media Attributions
- Elevator_buttons_(2552583462)
- blackbird 2
- three minds
- stanza