Exploring the Text

1. Each of the thirteen stanzas of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” might be a complete poem. What, besides the blackbird, connects them?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Each of the thirteen stanzas of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” might be a complete poem. What, besides the blackbird, connects them?
2. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” has a cinematic quality that is introduced in the first stanza, when the eye of the speaker moves from a long establishing shot of snowy mountains to a close-up of the eye of a blackbird. What other film techniques do you find as you work through the poem? Consider the use of framing, close-ups, even sound.

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” has a cinematic quality that is introduced in the first stanza, when the eye of the speaker moves from a long establishing shot of snowy mountains to a close-up of the eye of a blackbird. What other film techniques do you find as you work through the poem? Consider the use of framing, close-ups, even sound.
3. Haddam, a town in Connecticut, is mentioned in stanzas VII and XI. What are some possible explanations for the Connecticut references? What comment might Stevens be making by contrasting Connecticut life to blackbirds?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Haddam, a town in Connecticut, is mentioned in stanzas VII and XI. What are some possible explanations for the Connecticut references? What comment might Stevens be making by contrasting Connecticut life to blackbirds?
4. Is there logic to the order of the stanzas? Try reshuffling them to see if the meaning of the poem changes.

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Is there logic to the order of the stanzas? Try reshuffling them to see if the meaning of the poem changes.
5. Wallace Stevens said that this group of poems was “not meant to be a collection of epigrams or of ideas, but of sensations.” What sensations does the poem produce in you as you read it? How does Stevens achieve his purpose of creating sensations?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Wallace Stevens said that this group of poems was “not meant to be a collection of epigrams or of ideas, but of sensations.” What sensations does the poem produce in you as you read it? How does Stevens achieve his purpose of creating sensations?