A Walk with Wallace Stevens: II

(Note: This post is a continuation of the one previously posted. You might want to scan that one first.)

Before we continue on our Wallace Stevens Walk through the Asylum Hill section of Hartford (CT), I wanted to suggest a couple of ways in which you might approach Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird  with young children or adolescents--or have fun with it yourself.

IDEAS FOR SHARING STEVENS' POETRY WITH OTHERS

Use the haiku-like stanzas to inspire a work of art:

I would think that watercolors would be especially suited for illustrating some of the stanzas of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". A very nice technique with young artists is to first draw an outline of a picture in black Sharpie permanent marker on good watercolor paper. Then they can use watercolors in either saturated color or a wash for a pretty effect. Young children and adolescents may either wish to illustrate a part of the poem directly or use the poetry to inspire their own creations.

If you're looking for a volume of Stevens poetry that may appeal to children, you might look at:












This book is part of a series that treats a variety of American poets and presents them in a format that is supposed to appeal to younger readers. 








Older children and adults might be interested in the aspects of the artistic Cubism movement (e.g., Picasso) can be seen in this poem particularly, in which an artist is portraying a single subject in multiple layers, styles, and viewpoints.


Listen to "Thirteen Ways...." inspired music: 

Some pieces that have been directly inspired by the Stevens poem include:

(I'm including these Amazon links so that you can see the images and read the details of the productions. I would also think an i-tunes search might be fruitful. I haven't listened to these, but playing them while creating some poem-inspired artwork sounds kind of cool to me.)

Create your own "Wallace Stevens Walk":
You might design your own poem markers that wind around your home or property or that create a path in a building (e.g., a school) hallway. Wouldn't it be great to have the 13 stanzas and accompanying artwork posted at intermittent sites along a school corridor or around the perimeter of a classroom?


Take a scientific or cultural look at blackbirds:
Use the Wallace Stevens exporation as a jumping off point to investigate blackbirds from a biological/behavioral point of view; or consider how blackbird imagery has been used in other artistic and cultural mediums. The Four-and-Twenty-Blackbird nursery rhyme and The Beatles song "Blackbird" come to mind. But there are other bits of folklore about black birds--including ravens and crows--that could be explored, not the least of which might include the Hitchcock's classic movie--

And now that you've been sufficiently creeped out by black birds....

let us continue on our walk down Asylum Avenue....

We noticed this bit of gothic-whimsy on the iron gate in front of The Hartford Conservatory of Music, the location of the third Stevens stone...and seems a fitting segway from the Hitchcock film back to our walk.

The next stanza may be read as a bit of koan. 

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

When you do the math, we come up with a new paradigm that reflects and challenges the religious/cultural messages that a man and a woman become one.  If "two are one", is it also be true that "three are one"? 

Do the man, the woman and the blackbird represent a Trinity?

The building across the street. Undoubtedly this was a private home at one time; now it houses a FM rock radio station.

The next block brings us to the fifth stone, in front of the original building of St. Francis Hospital. Wally is almost halfway home.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

The auditory "image" of this one is quite beautiful when you think of a sound of a birdsong and the  echo of silence that succeeds it. If you're interested you might ponder the various meanings of the word "inflections" and "innuendoes".

Here is a view of the St. Francis Hospital building as seen from the fifth Stevens stone on Asylum Avenue.  Throughout Stevens'  lifetime he would've seen several expansions of the hospital campus on the land behind this Asylum Hill structure.

To continue on our walk, we must cross the intersection of Woodland Street. Directly across the street is the building that houses the Hartford Classical Magnet High School, a public high school with an emphasis on a classic liberal arts curriculum. 

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of a blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

I hate to show an image here, but am struck by the image of the icicles filling a long window "with barbaric glass" and thought this image captures a certain spirit of nature's hostile and uncivilized quality evoked by that phrase. It's certainly an odd juxtaposition with our sunny summery day in the above photograph (this brings to mind the famous line of Albert Camus...."In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer"...could the inverse also be true?)

ENJOY YOUR HAPPY DAY!