Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

[1][2] The literary scholar Beverly Maeder writing for the Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens speaks of the importance the author placed upon linguistic structure in many of his poems.

Buttel proposes that the title "alludes humorously to the Cubists' practice of incorporating into unity and stasis a number of possible views of the subject observed over a span of time".

But Stevens dismisses metaphysics in his 1948 essay "Imagination as Value", when he approvingly quotes Professor Joad's assertion that "all talk about God, whether pro or anti, is twaddle", and then Stevens adds, "What is true of one metaphysical term is true of all"[5] There are better grounds for classifying it as among the book's sensualist poems.

[8] The poem has inspired a number of musicians, including the American contemporary music ensemble Eighth Blackbird which derived their name from the poem's eighth stanza which makes references to "noble accents/And lucid, inescapable rhythms", and inspired several specific compositions as well: Additionally, the title "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a..." has been endlessly paraphrased in articles (e.g. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackout",[12] music album-titles (e.g. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Goldberg"),[13] and anywhere else a particular topic seems to bear examination from a number of different perspectives.

The poem has influenced works of fiction including Ken Chowder's 1980 novel Blackbird Days[14] and a 2015 novella by Colum McCann titled "Thirteen Ways of Looking".