Wallace Stevens

POETRY: Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens

June 6, 2014

I Among twenty snowy mountains The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflexions Or the beauty of innuendos, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI 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. VII 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? VIII I [...]

POETRY: On Our Own

March 19, 2014

Solitude (1) Tomas Tranströmer I was nearly killed here, one night in February. My car shivered, and slewed sideways on the ice, right across into the other lane. The slur of traffic came at me with their [...]

POETRY: Advent (Five Poems)

December 19, 2012

A Prayer for the Healing of the Wounds of Christ Laurence Housman (For Advent) Is not the work done? Nay, for still the scars Are open; still Earth’s pain stands deified, With arms spread wide: And still, like falling stars, Its blood-drops strike the doorposts, where abide The watchers with the bride, To wait the final coming of their kin, And hear the sound of kingdoms gathering in. While Earth wears wounds, still must Christ’s wounds remain, Whom love made life, and of whom life made pain, And of whom pain made death. No breath, Without Him, sorrow draws; no feet Wax weary, and no hands hard labor bear, But He doth wear The travail and the heat: Also, for all things perishing, He saith, “My grief, My pain, My death.” O kindred [...]

POETRY: Four Last Poems

August 15, 2012

Night on the Prairies Walt Whitman Night on the prairies, The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low, The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets; I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized before. Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death and test propositions. How plenteous! how spiritual! how resumé! The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me of myriads of other globes. Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them, And now touch’d [...]