Imagination as a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens is quite renowned for his emphasis on the imagination. He utilizes his own imagination constantly in his numerous written works, and stresses the importance of others using theirs while attempting to understand his. In one such work, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” his theme of imagination and deeper thought is constant throughout the work. This poem in particular is useful when reading Stevens’ “Imagination as Value.” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” serves as a perfect example when trying to understand the applications of many of his points in the essay.

To begin, we must examine parts II and III:

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.

These lines depict a feeling of confusion and indecisiveness. Being of three minds alludes to the famous phrase of ‘being of two minds,’ meaning, having two different pulling emotions or thoughts. Additionally, the blackbird was ‘whirled’ in the wind, not the master of his own course, nor heading in any one particular direction. These allusions refer to Steven’s definition of imagination, as he states in “Imagination as Value, saying, “It does not seem possible to say of the imagination that it has a single characteristic which of itself gives it a certain single value as,” (133). This would suggest that while the blackbird can represent many different things in Stevens’ poem, the imagination is certainly a viable option.

Later, in verses VI and VII, the reader is presented with highly depictive adjectives and word choices. It is impossible to read them without imagining the images they describe:

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?

In fact, Stevens even uses the word imagine in the VII stanza, emphasizing to his readers that they must stretch their minds in order to fully appreciate his work. Again, in “Imagination as Value,” he states, “It is the value of imagination. The poet tries to exemplify it, in part, as I have tried to exemplify it here, by identifying it with an imaginative activity that diffuses itself throughout our lives.” (149). And in truth, without making the reading of this poem into an ‘imaginative activity’ there is no way to truly understand and appreciate his words, and the process that experiencing them begins.

Finally, in stanza IX, Stevens writes:

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles

To me, this is the most piercing stanza in the entire work. Here, Stevens addresses perspective head on. In “Imagination as Reason,” Stevens says, “But, given another mind, given the mind of a man of strong powers, accustomed to thought, accustomed to the essays of the imagination, and the whole imaginative substance changes. It is as if one could say that the imagination lives as the mind lives,” (151). This poem in and of itself is experimentation with perception. Stevens provides a somewhat vague narrative, and the reader may choose how to interpret his words. This is an exercise that Stevens himself relishes, for it is the ‘imaginative activity’ that he endorses so thoroughly. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a marriage between perception and imagination, and the interplay between the two. In fact, even in the title, Stevens warns his readers of multifaceted work that they are about to being; ‘thirteen’ itself is a large number, and he provides thirteen completely different and probing interpretations of a blackbird. This work perfectly embodies the use of imagination as a value.