Thirteen Ways of Tasting a Blackbird
Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 1:49 am
Because Deer said the Iolar poem was nice and there was a poem about modern/contemporary American poets, I'm gonna post another...I dunno, mess-around poem I wrote a few years ago in an intro to poetry course.
However, it is worth saying that they probably are kind of mean, XIV-XVIII are just kind of dumb and weird.
As you might guess this is based on Wallace Stevens's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird which you can find here if you want to:
www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html
The first 13 are just rewrites of the first:
I:
Within twenty chilling freezers
The only edible thing
Was the eye of a 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 chocolatey icing
An indecipherable taste.
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*;
And I know, too
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know how to cook.
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 the red light,
Even those abstaining from 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.
*You know, flour, water, salt, eggs, the like...it's like you can't make a full meal without involving them somehow!
**Thus causing the sense of taste to deaden temporarily, marking a limit much like the blackbird in the original stanza marks the limits of sight. Also maybe has to do with taste buds (dot-circle like?)
I also wrote in the assignment at this point:
"Stanza VI was the hardest. Stanza IV is obviously the best. Stanza III makes no sense since who would microwave a blackbird breast? Not to mention it would be de-feathered first (I hope). I realize this is less creative than what you wanted so here are now 5 new ways of looking at a blackbird."
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 do love the phrase "slicked with arsenic,"
However, it is worth saying that they probably are kind of mean, XIV-XVIII are just kind of dumb and weird.
As you might guess this is based on Wallace Stevens's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird which you can find here if you want to:
www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html
The first 13 are just rewrites of the first:
I:
Within twenty chilling freezers
The only edible thing
Was the eye of a 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 chocolatey icing
An indecipherable taste.
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*;
And I know, too
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know how to cook.
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 the red light,
Even those abstaining from 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.
*You know, flour, water, salt, eggs, the like...it's like you can't make a full meal without involving them somehow!
**Thus causing the sense of taste to deaden temporarily, marking a limit much like the blackbird in the original stanza marks the limits of sight. Also maybe has to do with taste buds (dot-circle like?)
I also wrote in the assignment at this point:
"Stanza VI was the hardest. Stanza IV is obviously the best. Stanza III makes no sense since who would microwave a blackbird breast? Not to mention it would be de-feathered first (I hope). I realize this is less creative than what you wanted so here are now 5 new ways of looking at a blackbird."
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 do love the phrase "slicked with arsenic,"
