Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Author: Wallace Stephens
Introduction:
In this poem, the blackbird represents misery, sorrow, enmity, or heartache. It uses a picture to describe emotions and feelings.

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 inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
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 know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

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

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
for blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Grass*

Author: Carl Sandburg
Written: 1918
Introduction:
This poem shows one view of many on war. Coincidentally, it was written shortly after World War I ended.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -

I am the grass, I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass.

Let me work.

*The proper names in this poem are all famous battlefields in, respectively, the Napoleonic wars, the American Civil War, and World War I.

Venice

Author: Boris Pasternak
Translated (from original Russian) by: Andrey Kneller
Written: 1913
Introduction:
Pasternak's description in this piece is riviting. Enjoy.

So early that it hadn’t dawned,
The ringing windowpanes awoke me.
A moistened pretzel made of stone,--
Below me, Venice floated calmly.

Now, all was calm, but all the while,
While still asleep, I heard a cry
And like a mark that had been silenced,
It still disturbed the morning sky.

Like Scorpio’s trident, - there it dangled
Above the mandolins. Perchance,
Somewhere afar, a woman, angered,
Had voiced the call in her defense.

As though a pitchfork in the skyline,
Though silenced now, her voice got stuck.
The Grand Canal, with nervous smiles,
Much like a fugitive, gazed back.

And rushing, hungry and stretched out,
The jaded waves already neared
As gondolas swayed, tightly bound
And honed their noses on the pier.

Beyond the docks of boats, already,
From dreams, reality was raised
And Venice, -- a Venetian lady
Was diving off the bank with grace.

from apres moi

Author: Boris Pasternak
Introduction:
The first stanza of this poem appears in it's original Russian in Regina Spektor's song: Apres Moi

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

Go hire a buggy. For siz grivnas,
Race through the noise of bells and wheels
To where the ink and all your grieving
Are muffled when the rainshower falls.

To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal,
A pyriad rooks, plucked from the trees,
Fall down into the puddles, hurl
Dry sadness deep into the eyes.

Below, the wet black earth shows through,
With sudded cries the wind is pitted,
The more haphazard, the more true
The poetry that sobs its heart out.

Echo

Author: Boris Pasternak
Translated (from original Russian) by: Yevgeny Bonver
Written: 1915
Introduction:
This is the first of a series of poems I intend to post by Boris Pasternak

A little nightingale, for a night,
Means what a pail means for well, fulled.
I'm not sure, that starry skies glide
From songs to the other ones, truly.

But when her night song fuller rings,
The night o'er the song comes else broader.
A root of a tree better brings
When sop strikes into rooter's borders.

And if there is wordless delight
Of beauty of leafage of birches,
It seems, that a song strikes a hut,
With chain, that is mighty and tourtures.

And then sadness drops from the steel,
And then night dissolves into mire,
And all, till the far ploughed fields
Through it from the garden, is spied.

Personification - Part 2

Author: Kathryn E. Fillmore
Written: 2/6/08
Introduction:
Enjoy part two.

Three waxy figures sit, filling their silver thrones. Their off-white clothing seems to have been poured over them, dripping with gaudy jewels. They sit and sit, collecting dust, dreading their doom. Beheading? You could say that. Burned at the stake? You could say that. Electrocution? Similar. Always. Waiting.

Personification - Part 1

Author: Kathryn E. Fillmore
Written: 2/5/08
Introduction:
Personification is so much like music. When you use lifelike descriptions to characterize an inanimate objects, it's strangely remenicent of an aria, a melody, a song. A song that tells a story and paints a picture. It does both.

I see a pencil on the desk. It's subtle presence is slightly unnerving. What kind of complicated steps has it performed in it's lifetime? It has danced it's dance, guided by it's five fingered partner. It gives of itself, a little bit, at each dance, never slowing down, until it is left as nothing...

us

Regina Spektor is my biggest role model. These are the lyrics to her musically phenomenal song, "Us":

They made a statue of us
And it put it on a mountain top
Now tourists come and stare at us
Blow bubbles with their gum
Take photographs for fun, for fun

They'll name a city after us
And later say it's all our fault
Then they'll give us a talking to
Then they'll give us a talking to
Because they've got years of experience

We're living in a den of thieves
Rummaging for answers in the pages
We're living in a den of thieves
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious

We wear our scarves just like a noose
But not 'cause we want eternal sleep
And though our parts are slightly used
New ones are slave labor you can keep

We're living in a den of thieves
Rummaging for answers in the pages
We're living in a den of thieves
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious

They made a statue of us
They made a statue of us
The tourists come and stare at us
The sculptor's marble sends regards
They made a statue of us
They made a statue of us
Our noses have begun to rust

We're living in a den of thieves
Rummaging for answers in the pages
Were living in a den of thieves
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious
And it's contagious