13 Ways of Cooking Up a Blackbird
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:08 am
Not exactly creative, since they drawing entirely on Stevens' poem, but here's something I did a while ago that some people on here might enjoy reading.
I did my best to model these first 13 (the taste ones) directly on Stevens' originals. The most effective are II, IV and V. The rest are mediocre at best, and VI and XI are just bad. I am thinking about changing XI to be about a man in some kind of glassy, ritzy skyscraper restaurant or something and taking the element of travel out entirely.
I:
Within twenty chilling freezers
The only edible thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II:
I was of three minds
Like a stew
In which there are three blackbird brains.
III:
The blackbird’s feathers whirled in the microwave’s “winds.”
It was a small part of the meal.
IV:
A shell and a crust
Are one pie.
A shell and a crust and baked blackbirds
Are one pie.
V:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of preparation
Or the beauty of taste,
The blackbird omelet sizzling
Or just after.
VI:
The icing filled the long cake
With barbaric gloss
The stencil of the blackbird*
Crossed it to and fro.
The mood
Traced in chocolaty icing
An indecipherable taste.
*The shape of the blackbird in the icing’s illustration. I couldn’t come up with a better word than stencil. It goes along with the theme of trivializing Stevens’ work quite effectively I think.
VII:
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you eat golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII:
I know noble ingredients,
And lucid, inescapable ingredients*;
But I know, too
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know how to cook.
*You know, flour, water, salt, eggs, the like…it’s like you can’t bake a goddamn thing without using them!
IX:
When the blackbird pie scalded my tongue ,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X:
At the scent of blackbirds
Cooking in red light,
Even the abstainers of gluttony
Would slaver disgustingly.
XI:
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him
In that he mistook
The taste of his meal
For blackbirds.
XII:
The oven is humming.
The blackbird must be cooking.
XIII:
It was dinner all lunchtime.
It was eating time
And it was going to be eating time.
The blackbird sat
On the cedar table.
Then these are attempts at additions to the original:
XIV:
The blackbird’s image reflected
In my eye;
My eyes torn out by its beak,
I couldn’t look upon the blackbird.
XV:
The blackbird singing in the dead of night
With broken wings
I saw in the song
Though the blackbird was invisible, as black
As the night.
XVI:
I see,
Gazing into your eyes,
A blackbird
XVII:
Stuffed with rags and cotton,
Skin slicked with arsenic,
I wasn’t looking.
I looked in the glass spheres –
The blackbird was gone;
I saw the blackbird.
XVIII:
The egg, obscuring from my sight
A blackbird,
Is why there will someday be
A blackbird.
I cheated with XIV since it's more of a crow, carrion-eater style image. The only one I like of these are the last two.
I did my best to model these first 13 (the taste ones) directly on Stevens' originals. The most effective are II, IV and V. The rest are mediocre at best, and VI and XI are just bad. I am thinking about changing XI to be about a man in some kind of glassy, ritzy skyscraper restaurant or something and taking the element of travel out entirely.
I:
Within twenty chilling freezers
The only edible thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II:
I was of three minds
Like a stew
In which there are three blackbird brains.
III:
The blackbird’s feathers whirled in the microwave’s “winds.”
It was a small part of the meal.
IV:
A shell and a crust
Are one pie.
A shell and a crust and baked blackbirds
Are one pie.
V:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of preparation
Or the beauty of taste,
The blackbird omelet sizzling
Or just after.
VI:
The icing filled the long cake
With barbaric gloss
The stencil of the blackbird*
Crossed it to and fro.
The mood
Traced in chocolaty icing
An indecipherable taste.
*The shape of the blackbird in the icing’s illustration. I couldn’t come up with a better word than stencil. It goes along with the theme of trivializing Stevens’ work quite effectively I think.
VII:
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you eat golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII:
I know noble ingredients,
And lucid, inescapable ingredients*;
But I know, too
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know how to cook.
*You know, flour, water, salt, eggs, the like…it’s like you can’t bake a goddamn thing without using them!
IX:
When the blackbird pie scalded my tongue ,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X:
At the scent of blackbirds
Cooking in red light,
Even the abstainers of gluttony
Would slaver disgustingly.
XI:
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him
In that he mistook
The taste of his meal
For blackbirds.
XII:
The oven is humming.
The blackbird must be cooking.
XIII:
It was dinner all lunchtime.
It was eating time
And it was going to be eating time.
The blackbird sat
On the cedar table.
Then these are attempts at additions to the original:
XIV:
The blackbird’s image reflected
In my eye;
My eyes torn out by its beak,
I couldn’t look upon the blackbird.
XV:
The blackbird singing in the dead of night
With broken wings
I saw in the song
Though the blackbird was invisible, as black
As the night.
XVI:
I see,
Gazing into your eyes,
A blackbird
XVII:
Stuffed with rags and cotton,
Skin slicked with arsenic,
I wasn’t looking.
I looked in the glass spheres –
The blackbird was gone;
I saw the blackbird.
XVIII:
The egg, obscuring from my sight
A blackbird,
Is why there will someday be
A blackbird.
I cheated with XIV since it's more of a crow, carrion-eater style image. The only one I like of these are the last two.
